Iran observed a day of mourning Thursday for the at least 84 people killed when twin blasts ripped through a crowd commemorating the slain Revolutionary Guards general Qassem Soleimani.
The death toll was revised down from around 100 the day after what Iranian authorities labelled a “terrorist attack” that also left hundreds wounded near Soleimani’s tomb in the southern city of Kerman.
No one claimed responsibility for the explosions in Iran, which has suffered deadly attacks in the past from jihadists and other militants as well as targeted killings of officials and nuclear scientists blamed on arch foe Israel.
The blasts ripped through crowds who had come to honour Soleimani, four years after a US drone strike in Baghdad killed the veteran senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday blamed “evil and criminal enemies” of the Islamic republic, without naming them, and vowed a “harsh response.”
Regional tensions have surged amid the Gaza war sparked when Palestinian militant group Hamas launched their deadly October 7 attack on Israel, which Tehran welcomed while denying any involvement.
President Ebrahim Raisi’s political deputy, Mohammad Jamshidi, charged on social media platform X that “the responsibility for this crime lies with the US and Zionist (Israeli) regimes, and terrorism is just a tool.”
The United States rejected any suggestion that it or its ally Israel were behind the deadly blasts, while Israel declined to comment.
Soleimani, who headed the Guards’ foreign operations arm the Quds Force, was also a staunch enemy of the Sunni extremist Islamic State group which has carried out attacks in majority-Shiite Iran.
Iranian authorities called for mass protests over the Kerman blasts after weekly prayers on Friday, the day when local officials also said the victims’ funerals will be held.
Revising down the death toll, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi cited forensic data and said “the number of martyrs… has been announced as 84 so far,” official news agency IRNA reported.
He said 284 people were wounded and “195 are still hospitalized.”
With AFP
