Blasts kill more than 100 in Iran during ceremony marking death of Qassem Soleimani

Iran condemned a “terrorist act” and vowed retribution after more than 100 people were killed in two bomb blasts at a ceremony to mark the death of a military commander.

The attacks on Wednesday were the deadliest in the Islamic republic in decades, hitting crowds gathering in the southern city of Kerman to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Qassem Soleimani, a former Revolutionary Guards leader, who was assassinated by the US in 2020.

Iranian officials quoted by state television said 103 people had been killed in the twin explosions and 211 injured. The death toll was expected to rise as some of the wounded were in critical condition.

The attacks came amid high tensions across the Middle East triggered by Hamas’s October 7th attack on southern Israel and the Jewish state’s offensive in Gaza.

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Tasnim, a news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, said two explosive-laden bags had been placed at the entrance of the cemetery in Kerman and that the perpetrators detonated the bombs remotely.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said those behind the attacks “should know that this tragedy will have a tough response”, while President Ebrahim Raisi vowed the “pursuit and identification of the planners and perpetrators” of the “terrorist act”. Tehran has not blamed a specific group or country.

While there was no claim of responsibility, Brig Gen Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani’s successor, said the attacks, and the killing of a senior Revolutionary Guards commander in Syria last week, would not deter Iran and groups in the region from “uprooting the Zionist regime”. His comments were the first by a senior Iranian figure linking the Kerman explosions to regional tensions.

[ Who was Qassem Suleimani? Iran farm boy who became more powerful than a president ]

The two explosions happened minutes apart, Iranian officials said, with the second blast striking people who rushed to the scene. The majority of casualties took place during the second explosion. The first went off about 700m from Soleimani’s grave, while the second took place about 1km away.

The site of Wednesday’s attack was highly symbolic. Soleimani was Iran’s most powerful military figure before he was assassinated in Iraq, and revered as a national hero by the Islamic regime and its supporters.

Iran has blamed previous attacks on militant organisations including the Mujahedin-e Khalq, an exiled opposition group once backed by Iraq, as well as separatist groups and Sunni jihadis.

The Islamic regime has also blamed Israel for several assaults inside the republic since 2010, but these have been targeted attacks against officials who were members of Iran’s military or involved in its nuclear programme.

This included an attack in 2020 involving a remote-controlled bomb attached to a vehicle that killed the republic’s top nuclear scientist.

The explosions on Wednesday came a day after Israel was accused of carrying out a drone strike in Beirut that killed a senior Hamas leader and six other members of the Palestinian militant group.

Iran-backed militant groups across the region have launched attacks against Israel and US forces since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7th. But Tehran insists that the militants it supports act independently and has said it does not want to be drawn into a broader regional conflict, despite its support for Hamas.

Islamic State, the Sunni jihadist terror group, has also previously carried out attacks in Iran, a predominantly Shia nation, including an attempted assault on the parliament building in Tehran and the mausoleum of the republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini in 2017.

The following year, gunmen opened fire on a military parade in the city of Ahvaz, killing dozens of people, including members of the Revolutionary Guards. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024