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Some 50 houses owned by members of Iran's Baha'i religious minority have been demolished in a village northeast of Tehran, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Radio Farda reported.

The incident took place last weekend in Ivel, in Mazandaran Province.

Radio Farda spoke to Baha'i Natoly Derakhshan, who witnessed the destruction of the homes. He told the station that the houses were first set on fire and later demolished by four bulldozers.

"We informed the governor's office that they were destroying our houses, but they did nothing to prevent it," Derakhshan said.

The incident is not the first time that homes of Baha'is have been demolished in Iran. Baha'i cemeteries have also been razed, most recently in a May 29 incident in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

The Baha'i faith began in Iran in the 19th century, and currently has an estimated 5 million followers worldwide.

While Baha'is regard their faith as within the tradition of Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, Iran's Shi'ite government regards Baha'ism as Islamic heresy.

There are some 300,000 followers of the Baha'i faith living in Iran, a community that human rights groups say has faced serious repression under the Islamic republic.

But there has been pressure on Iran to improve the plight of its Bahai community.

Some senior Shia clergymen - although uncompromising when it comes to theology - say Bahais must be given basic rights and treated like citizens.

Bahais, whose headquarters are in Haifa, are seen as heretics by some in Iran "They are members of mankind," says Mohsen Kadivar, an Islamic scholar at Duke University in North Carolina.

"As such they should be treated humanely and in accordance with the rights of citizens and basic human rights."

Before his death last year, Iran's Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, the most senior authority on Shia Islam, issued a fatwa in favour of Bahais.

He called on the Iranian government to grant followers of the religion basic civil and political rights.

There has also been diplomatic pressure on Iran.
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That's a relief. I'm sure Iran, N. Korea and other thug nations will think twice before they do something like this again.
The UN might get someone to issue a soft 'condemnation' for their actions.
But more seriously, where are the loon leftists and loon Muslims to protest this ?
Is it their day off from participating in unruly mobs ?