by Parisa Hafezi
DUBAI (Reuters) – Two explosions in southeastern Iran on Wednesday during a ceremony honoring the late leader of an elite army unit killed nearly 100 people, officials said. Iranian authorities, blaming unspecified “terrorists” for this attack which has not yet been claimed.
According to Iranian state television, the two explosions occurred with an interval of 15 minutes as a crowd gathered at a cemetery in Kerman where Qassem Soleimani, former head of the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Al Quds force, is buried. , killed on January 3, 2020 in an American strike in Iraq.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi condemned a “hateful and inhumane crime”, while the supreme leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised a “strong response” to the “criminals” responsible for the attack, after comments reported by the official press.
Several countries, including Russia and Turkey, have condemned the attacks.
The two explosions left 95 dead and 211 injured, Health Minister Bahram Eynollahi said on public television, while a previous report showed 103 dead.
It was the deadliest attack in the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Tehran has in the past accused its great regional rival Israel of attacks against personalities or places on Iranian territory, accusations never confirmed or denied by the Jewish state.
There was no immediate indication of any involvement of a foreign state in the two explosions at the Kerman cemetery.
An unidentified local official said “the explosions were caused by terrorist attacks,” the state press reported.
The semi-official Nournews agency reported that several gas canisters had exploded on the road leading to the cemetery.
Videos released by Iranian media showed dozens of bodies scattered, with bystanders trying to tend to survivors and others fleeing the area.
Public television broadcast images of Red Crescent rescuers caring for the injured at the ceremony, which was attended by several hundred people.
“Our teams are evacuating the injured (…) but there are crowd movements blocking the roads,” said the head of the Red Crescent for the province of Kerman, Reza Fallah.
(Written by Parisa Hafezi; Jean-Stéphane Brosse and Kate Entringer for the French version, edited by Blandine Hénault, Tangi Salaün and Jean Terzian)
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