The damaged car of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh after it was attacked near Tehran. AFP

Gulf Today Report

An Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has been assassinated in Tehran on Friday.

Fakhrizadeh was injured in the attack in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran.

The scientist has been credited for masterminding a secret atomic weapons programme.

Local media said Fakhrizadeh died of his injuries in hospital.

Israel claims that Fakhrizadeh led the country to build the nuclear programme.

Media reported that explosion and gunfire killed the scientist.  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once called out in a news conference saying: "Remember that name,” pointing at Fakhrizadeh.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Photos and video showed a Nissan sedan with bullet holes through windshield and blood pooled on the road.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

An exiled Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in May 2011 issued a report with what it said was a photograph of Fakhrizadeh, with dark hair and beard stubble.

It was not possible to independently verify the picture.

The NCRI said in the report that Fakhrizadeh was born in 1958 in Qom, was a deputy defence minister and a Revolutionary Guards brigadier-general, and holds a nuclear engineering doctorate and taught at Iran’s University of Imam Hussein.