At least 103 people were killed and 141 others injured by explosions at a ceremony in Iran marking the fourth anniversary of the U.S. drone assassination of the country’s top general Qassem Soleimani on Wednesday, according to state media reports.
Local television reported that two blasts occurred near the burial place of Gen. Soleimani, who served as head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, in the southeastern city of Kerman. Hundreds of people had assembled close to the cemetery when the explosions took place.
A Kerman province official was quoted by state media as describing the blasts as “terrorist attacks,” Reuters reports. A pair of bags containing bombs were placed along the route the procession followed to the cemetery, officials told state media, according to The New York Times. The explosive devices were then apparently detonated by remote control, the officials added.
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Babak Yektaparast, a spokesperson for Iran’s emergency services, was quoted by state television for the casualty figures, according to the Associated Press. The news agency said footage suggests that the second explosion came around 15 minutes after the first, with militants typically using a delayed second blast to target responding emergency service personnel.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Soleimani was considered among the most powerful figures in Iran. He was killed on Jan. 3, 2020, in a drone strike in Iraq near Baghdad International Airport. Then-President Donald Trump said at the time the “flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world” had been conducted at his direction, adding that “Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him.”
It’s not clear who may have been responsible for Wednesday’s attacks, which comes amid heightened tensions across the region over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and cross-border skirmishes with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Soleimani’s burial in 2020 had to be postponed when at least 56 mourners were killed and over 200 others were injured in a stampede at the commander’s funeral, for which thousands of people took to the streets to pay their respects.
