Two explosions at Kerman ceremony marking anniversary of killing of Qassem Suleimani raise Middle East tensions further
More than 95 Iranians were killed and scores more injured in a terrorist attack at a ceremony in Iran to commemorate the assassination of a top general, further heightening tensions in the increasingly volatile Middle East.
The explosions came at a memorial ceremony in Iran marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s al-Quds force, and it was not clear whether either of Suleimani’s principal regional adversaries – Israel or Islamic State – were responsible for the carnage.
Iran’s new minister of interior, the hardliner Ahmad Vahidi, did not immediately attribute blame for the attack and no side claimed responsibility for the deadliest single terrorist incident since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The US state department said it had no reason to believe Israel was involved.
An early death toll of 103 was revised down, but Iran’s health minister, Bahram Einollahi, said many of the wounded were in critical condition and the toll could rise.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
State-run media in Iran cited Babak Yektaparast, a spokesperson for the country’s emergency service, as saying 73 people had been killed and 170 wounded.
Suleimani’s body is buried in the cemetery along with 1,024 other people regarded as martyrs, and the site has become a place of pilgrimage for supporters of the so-called “axis of resistance” against the US and the west.
Suleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020 and was seen as the leader directing Iranian proxy forces in Iraq and Syria.
Iran only recently said it had eradicated a group backed by the Mossad, the Israeli state secret service.
On 25 December, an Israeli airstrike in Syria killed a top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), prompting Tehran to threaten that Israel would “certainly pay” for its actions.
Iranian state media identified the commander as Razi Mousavi, a senior adviser of the Quds Force, saying he had been killed in an airstrike near the Syrian capital, Damascus.
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