DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two bombs exploded and killed at least 84 people during a commemoration of a prominent Iranian general killed by the United States in a 2020 drone strike, officials said Iranians, while the Middle East remains under tension in the face of Israel’s war. with Hamas in Gaza.
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No one immediately claimed responsibility for what appeared to be the deadliest militant attack targeting Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian leaders pledged to punish those responsible for the blasts, which injured at least 284 people.
The explosions occurred within minutes of each other on Wednesday, shaking the city of Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran. The second explosion sprayed shrapnel into a screaming crowd fleeing the first blast.
A previous death toll of 103 was revised downward twice after authorities realized that some names had been repeated on a list of victims and because of the severity of injuries suffered by some of the dead, they said. health authorities. However, with many injured being in critical condition, the toll could rise.
The rally marked the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq. The explosions occurred near his grave as long lines of people gathered for the event.
Iranian state television and officials described the attacks as bombings, without immediately giving clear details of what happened. The attacks come a day after a deputy leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Beirut.
The first bomb exploded around 3 p.m. Wednesday and the second exploded about 20 minutes later, Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on state television. He said the second explosion killed and injured the most people.
Images and videos shared on social media appear to match accounts from officials, who said the first explosion occurred about 700 meters (765 yards) from Soleimani’s grave in the Kerman Martyrs’ Cemetery near a parking lot. The crowd then rushed west along Shohada Street, where the second explosion struck about 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) from the grave.
A second, delayed explosion is often used by militants to inflict more casualties by targeting emergency personnel responding to an attack.
Iranian state television and the official IRNA news agency cited emergency officials for the death toll. Authorities declared Thursday to be a day of national mourning.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the attackers would face “a severe response”, although he did not name any possible suspects. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi added: “Without doubt, the perpetrators and leaders of this cowardly act will soon be identified and punished. »
Iran has many enemies who could be behind this attack, including exile groups, militant organizations, and state actors.
While Israel has carried out attacks in Iran because of its nuclear program, it has carried out targeted assassinations, not mass casualty bombings. A US State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said US officials had “no reason” to believe Israel was involved in Wednesday’s attack in Iran. This was echoed by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby at the White House, who said “our hearts go out to all of the innocent victims and their family members.”
Sunni extremist groups, including the Islamic State group, have in the past carried out large-scale attacks that killed civilians in Shiite-majority Iran, but not in the relatively peaceful Kerman region.
Iran has also been the scene of mass protests in recent years, notably following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. The country has also been targeted by exile groups in attacks dating back to the unrest surrounding the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Iran itself has armed militant groups over the decades, including Hamas, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. As Israel wages its devastating war in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people, Hezbollah and the Houthis have launched attacks against Israel that they say came in the name of the Palestinians.
Israel is suspected of launching the attack that killed a Hamas deputy leader in Beirut on Tuesday, but the attack caused limited casualties in a densely populated neighborhood of the Lebanese capital. Last week, a suspected Israeli strike killed a commander of Syria’s Revolutionary Guards.
A Houthi spokesman, Mohammed Abdel-Salam, sought to link the bombings to “Iran’s support for resistance forces in Palestine and Lebanon”, although he did not specifically blame anyone for the attack. Some Iranian officials have also alluded to Israeli and U.S. involvement without providing evidence, which is common after militant attacks.
In Beirut, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called those who died in the attacks “martyrs who died on the same road, the same cause and the same battle as those led by” Soleimani.
The government of neighboring Iraq expressed its condolences to the victims and the European Union issued a statement offering “solidarity with the Iranian people.” Even Saudi Arabia, a longtime regional rival that reached détente with Iran last year, has offered sympathy.
Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s regional military activities and is hailed as a national icon among supporters of Iranian theocracy. He also helped secure the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad after 2011 Arab Spring protests against him escalated into a civil, then regional, war that still rages today.
Soleimani was relatively unknown in Iran until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. His popularity and mystery grew after U.S. officials called for his assassination because of his help arming militants with bombs roadside penetrators that killed and maimed American troops.
A decade and a half later, Soleimani had become Iran’s most recognizable battlefield commander. He ignored calls to enter politics but became as powerful, if not more so, than his civilian leaders.
Ultimately, a drone strike launched by the Trump administration killed the general, part of an escalation of incidents that followed the 2018 unilateral withdrawal of the United States from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Soleimani’s death has already sparked large processions. During his funeral in 2020, a stampede broke out in Kerman and at least 56 people were killed and more than 200 injured as thousands crowded into the procession.
Until Wednesday, the deadliest attack to hit Iran since the revolution was the truck bombing of the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party in Tehran in 1981. That attack killed at least 72 people, including the leader of the party, four government ministers, eight vice-ministers and 23 parliamentarians.
In 1978, just before the revolution, an intentional fire at the Rex cinema in Abadan killed hundreds of people.
Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Türkiye; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Jack Jeffery and Emma Burrows in London; and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
