An Iranian health ministry official says the injuries suffered by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes in late February are only “superficial”, offering a rare account of the day he was wounded, AFP reports.

The 56-year-old has not appeared publicly since he was named as Iran’s supreme leader on March 8, issuing only written statements, fuelling speculation about his health.

Health ministry spokesman Hossein Kermanpour describes the day Khamenei was wounded and his arrival at a hospital, which he did not identify. He said the supreme leader arrived at the hospital around 1pm on February 28 and “entered the operating room along with several other wounded individuals”.

“Apart from superficial injuries to the face, head and legs, which caused neither amputation nor any particular medical problem, nothing major had happened,” Kermanpour tells the ILNA news agency. “From my perspective as a physician, these were not considered serious injuries and required no special procedures apart from one or two stitches.”

He adds that Khamenei, who was fasting until nightfall during Ramazan, “refused to break his fast and kept fasting until iftar, which itself showed his good health”.

Kermanpour says he was discharged from the hospital at around 2am on March 1, but did not say where he was moved.