Brother of a senior Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) commander who was killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot last week dismissed the report released by an Iranian paper alleging that General Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam was martyred as he was testing an intercontinental missile, Fars News Agency reported.
The blast at the IRGC base on November 12 killed 36 people, including General Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, who was in charge of the IRGC's weapons and military equipment self-sufficiency program.
"Materials about intercontinental and ballistic missile are creations of themselves (paper). I'm sending a letter to Iran newspaper denying the quotes," Moqaddam's brother Mohammad Tehrani Moqaddam, who is an IRGC General himself, told FNA on Saturday, reiterating that the newspaper ran quotes that weren't his.
The government daily Iran quoted Mohammed Tehrani Moghaddam as saying in an interview on Saturday that the accident occurred during testing of the long-range missile.
"He lost his life while doing a final test of the missile," Moghaddam said, according to the Iran newspaper. "The project was in the final testing phase. It was related to an intercontinental ballistic missile. ... It was a completely high-tech, confidential process."