2024-01-03 18:05:55
Iran declared a day of national mourning on Thursday after two bombs exploded in the middle of a crowd on Wednesday, killing at least 103 people during a ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of the death of General Qasem Soleimani.
First modification: 01/03/2024 – 17:05
3 min
The explosions occurred at a time of great tension in the Middle East, a day after Hamas’s number two, Saleh al Aruri, an ally of Iran, was killed in a drone attack in Beirut, which Lebanese authorities attributed to Israel.
The explosions took place near the Saheb al Zaman mosque, where Soleimani’s tomb is located, in the southern Iranian city of Kerman.
“A huge explosion was heard near the mosque,” the state television channel reported, before adding that another explosion had resounded minutes later.
Rahman Jalali, deputy governor of Kerman province, declared on television that it was “a terrorist attack.”
No one claimed responsibility for the attack at the moment.
The toll, initially at 20 fatalities, increased rapidly. “The death toll increased to 103 after the death of people injured during the terrorist explosions,” the official IRNA news agency said.
Images spread online showed the crowd trying to flee the scene while security personnel cordoned off the area. State television showed ambulances and first responders at the scene.
At least 141 people were injured and some of them are “in critical condition,” according to IRNA.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency said “two bags of bombs exploded.” “The perpetrators… apparently detonated the bombs by remote control,” she added.
“We saw people falling”
Citing the mayor of Kerman, Saeed Tabrizi, the ISNA news agency stated that the two explosions occurred 10 minutes apart.
They took place as crowds gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the death of Soleimani, killed at age 62 in a 2020 attack by a US drone outside Baghdad airport.
“We were walking towards the cemetery when suddenly a vehicle stopped behind us and a trash can containing a bomb exploded,” a witness told ISNA.
“We only heard the noise of the explosion and saw people falling. There was a bomb in the trash can,” the witness insisted.
General Soleimani, in charge of foreign operations for the Revolutionary Guards – Iran’s ideological army – was the architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme guide, often referred to him as a “living martyr.”
Soleimani was one of the most popular personalities in the country and was considered a hero for his role in the defeat of the Islamic State group in both Iraq and Syria.
For many Iranians, his military and strategic prowess was key to preventing the multi-ethnic disintegration of neighboring countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
The general set Iran’s political and military agenda in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Both the United States and its allies long considered it the sworn enemy.
After participating in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), he rose quickly to become head of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, responsible for the foreign operations of the Islamic Republic.
After his death in 2020, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had decreed three days of national mourning. Millions of people honored him in the days after his assassination, in a show of national unity.
A survey published in 2018 by IranPoll and the University of Maryland revealed that Soleimani’s popularity was 83%, higher than then-President Hassan Rouhani and then-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
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