Iran’s newly installed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has been wounded but remains safe, officials said Wednesday, as questions mount over his absence from public appearances since assuming the country’s top leadership role.
"I heard news that Mr Mojtaba Khamenei had been injured. I have asked some friends who had connections," the Iranian president's son, Yousef Pezeshkian, wrote in a post on his Telegram channel.
"They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound," added Pezeshkian, who is a government advisor.
Khamenei was named Iran's supreme leader on Sunday to replace his father Ali who was assassinated in an air strike at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against the country on Feb. 28.
"He was also there and he was injured in that bombardment but I haven't seen that reflected in the foreign news," Tehran's ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, told The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday.
