2024-01-05 18:51:49
Iran accused Israel and the United States of being behind the attack which left at least 95 dead on Wednesday near the tomb of Qassem Soleimani, architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East whose death Iran commemorated four years ago, state media reported.
The official Irna news agency initially reported a death toll of 103, with state television reporting 211 injured, some of whom were in critical condition.
Health Minister Bahram Eynollahi later revised the number of people killed to 95, explaining that some names “had been recorded twice.”
A double explosion took place near the Saheb al-Zaman mosque, where the tomb of General Soleimani is located, in Kerman (south). A compact crowd of representatives of the regime and anonymous people was there for a ceremony.
A political adviser to the Iranian president accused Israel and the United States of being behind the attack.
“The responsibility for this crime lies with the American and Zionist regimes, and terrorism is only a tool,” Mohammad Jamshidi, political advisor to the Iranian president, wrote on X.
The State Department in Washington, for its part, deemed any suggestion of the involvement of the United States or Israel “absurd”.
Tehran promises a “severe response”
Iran’s sworn enemy, Israel, has not commented on the attack. “We are focused on the fighting with Hamas,” army spokesman Daniel Hagari responded to a question.
The attack, which was not immediately claimed, occurs in a very tense regional context since the start of the conflict in October between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and the day following the elimination of a senior official of the Palestinian Islamist movement in a strike near Beirut.
According to IRNA, a first explosion occurred 700 meters from General Soleimani’s grave, the second one kilometer further.
Videos on social media show participants desperately trying to leave the site as security cordons off the area. In other videos, people can be seen running, panicked and disoriented.
The Iranian government declared Thursday a “national day of mourning” following the attack, the deadliest in Iran since 1978, when an arson attack left at least 377 dead in a cinema in Abadan according to AFP archives.
As night fell, many people returned to the Kerman cemetery chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”. In Tehran, thousands of people gathered to pay tribute to Qassem Soleimani.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” to the attack, an “odious and cowardly” act for President Ebrahim Raïssi who canceled a trip planned for Thursday to Turkey, according to an Iranian media outlet. State.
Bombs operated by remote controls
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, supported by Tehran, denounced a “terrorist act (…) which seeks to destabilize the security of the Islamic Republic in the service of the agenda of the Zionist entity (Israel)”.
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced an attack “shocking in its cruelty and cynicism”, and the Secretary General of the UN, the European Union, France, Germany, Jordan and Saudi Saudi Arabia also condemned the attack.
“I condemned this terrorist attack in the strongest terms and I expressed (my) solidarity with the Iranian people,” communicated the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell, following a call with the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs , Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
Qassem Soleimani was killed in January 2020 in an American drone attack in Iraq. A key man in the Iranian regime, he was also one of the country’s most popular figures.
According to the Iranian Tasnim agency, which cites well-informed sources, the explosions were caused by “bombs hidden in two bags” and “the perpetrators apparently activated the bombs via a remote control.”
“We were walking towards the cemetery when a car suddenly stopped behind us and a trash can containing a bomb exploded,” said a witness cited by the Isna news agency.
According to the same agency, which quotes the mayor of Kerman, Said Tabrizi, the explosions occurred ten minutes apart.
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