TEHRAN: Tehran accused Israel of carrying out deadly double blasts on Tuesday outside the Iran’s embassy in Beirut, according to media reports.

The bombings were “an inhuman crime and spiteful act done by Zionists and their mercenaries,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said in remarks carried by the official IRNA news agency.

There were conflicting reports about Iranian casualties at the embassy.

In her statement to IRNA, Afkham also said Iran’s cultural attache Ibrahim Ansari, a mid-ranking Shiite cleric, was killed in the bombings. But speaking to state television later, she said Ansari is actually alive and showing “signs of life” despite being “critically wounded.”

Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Ghazanfar Rokn-Abadi, gave a similar account.

He told state television that Ansari was in surgery in a Beirut hospital, while expressing hope that he would soon “regain full health.”

The envoy had earlier said that all staff “inside the embassy” were unhurt in the attack.

In Tehran, state television and the Mehr and Fars news agencies said the Iranian killed in the blasts was a security guard who had been manning the embassy’s gate.

The powerful explosions just opposite the multistory embassy in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital killed at least 23 people, wounded almost 150 others and caused widespread damage.

They follow two other bomb attacks this year in the southern suburbs of Beirut that are the bastion of the powerful Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.

The group, which is sponsored by Iran, has drawn controversy for sending thousands of fighters into neighboring Syria to support the regime of President Bashar Assad as he battles a 32-month-old uprising.

Major attacks since Hariri assassination

2005

Feb. 14: Rafik Hariri is killed by a massive blast that leaves 23 people dead in all, including MP Bassel Fleyhane, and wounds 220 others.

June 2: Anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir is killed by a car bomb in the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh in Beirut.

June 21: Former Communist Party secretary general Georges Hawi dies in a car bombing near his home in the capital.

July 12: A car bomb kills one person in Beirut; Defense Minister Elias Murr is among the nine wounded.

2006

Nov. 21: Anti-Syrian MP and Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel and his bodyguard are shot dead in Jdeide, north of the capital.

2007

June 13: MP Walid Eido and nine other people, including one of his sons, die in a Beirut bomb blast.

Sept. 19: A car bombing in the Beirut suburb of Sin El-Fil kills anti-Syrian MP Antoine Ghanem and five other people.

Dec. 12: A car bomb kills General Francois El Haj and a bodyguard near Beirut. Haj had been tipped to replace army chief General Michel Sleiman.

2008

Jan. 15: Three civilians die and 26 are wounded when a bomb explodes in a northern suburb of Beirut. The attack is apparently aimed at a US embassy car.

Jan. 25: Five people, including top Lebanese security official Wissam Eid, die in a bomb blast targeting a convoy in a Christian suburb in eastern Beirut.

2012

Oct. 19: A car bomb targeting police intelligence chief Wissam Al-Hassan kills eight people and wounds 86 in the Ashrafiyeh district.

2013

Aug. 15: A car bomb in a southern Beirut suburb that is a stronghold of Hezbollah kills 27 people and wounds 336 others.

Eight days later, two car bombs in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, kill 45 people and wound hundreds of others, the worst attack since the end of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war.

Nov. 19: The Iranian embassy in Beirut is hit by a double suicide attack.