Tehran, Iran - Some 100 people were wounded in two days of clashes in Iran's clerical capital of Qom, pitting Muslim mystics against the security forces and hardline supporters of the official brand of Shiite Islam, the deputy governor said in comments.
Thirty-four security personnel were among the wounded in the disturbances Monday and Tuesday, Qom deputy governor Ahmad Hajizadeh told Tehran newspapers.
"After the destruction of the Shariyat prayer hall and the arrest of 1,200 dervishes (mystics), calm has returned to Qom," Hajizadeh told the Shargh daily.
"Thirty of the wounded remain in hospital, three of them in serious condition," he added.
"Those arrested are currently being questioned and apart from the ringleaders, they are gradually being released," he said, adding that 150 women who had initially been detained had all been freed.
Local authorities said the mystics were members of a Sufi order called the Nematollahi who had failed to heed orders to vacate a prayer hall in the city by a deadline of last Friday.
Hajizadeh charged that the sect's leaders had reneged on an earlier agreement to respect the deadline and had instead bussed in supporters from around Iran to hold a sit-in in and around the site.
"Eight-five percent of those who took part in the disturbances did not come from Qom and were armed, some of them with firearms," he said.
The Islamic mysticism followed by an array of Sufi orders since the early centuries of the faith has always aroused suspicion among orthodox Muslims, whether Shiite or Sunni.
In Shiite Islam, some Sufi orders have been further tarnished by the accusation of heresy because of their association with the heterodox Alevi faith practised in parts of
Syria and Turkey.
The city of Qom, south of Tehran, is the centre within Iran of the country's official Shiite religion. The denomination's main centres of Najaf and Karbala both lie in neighbouring
Iraq.