From Tehmina Mustapha
TEHRAN: Iran’s president and the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp on Friday vowed revenge at the funeral for the victims of twin Islamic State bombings two days earlier.
Nearly 100 people were killed at a memorial in the city of Kerman on Wednesday for top commander Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in Iraq in 2020 by a US drone Islamic State said on Thursday that two of its members had detonated explosive belts in the crowd that had gathered at the cemetery in the southeastern city.
“We will find you wherever you are,” IRGC commander Major-General Hossein Salami said at the funeral, referring to Islamic State. In a televised speech, President Ebrahim Raisi said: “Our enemies can see Iran’s power and the whole world knows its strength and capabilities. Our forces will decide on the place and time to take action”. State TV showed a dense crowd at the Imam Ali religious centre in Kerman where families wept over rows of coffins wrapped in the Iranian flag.
Mourners shouted “revenge, revenge”, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. Tehran often accuses Israel and the United States of backing anti-Iran militant groups that have carried out attacks in the past. Wednesday’s blasts, the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, came as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza nears the three-month mark. In 2022, Islamic State claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a Shi’ite shrine in Iran that killed 15 people, while earlier attacks claimed by Islamic State include twin bombings in 2017 that targeted Iran’s parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Earlier, Two explosions killed more than 100 people and wounded scores at a ceremony in Iran on Wednesday to commemorate top commander Qassem Soleimani who was killed by a US drone in 2020, Iranian officials said, blaming unspecified terrorists.
Iranian state television reported a first and then a second blast during a crowded anniversary event at the cemetery where Soleimani is buried in the southeastern city of Kerman.
An unnamed official told state news agency IRNA that “two explosive devices planted along the road leading to Kerman’s Martyrs’ Cemetery were detonated remotely by terrorists”.
State television said that at least 103 people had been killed and 211 others injured, making it one of the worst such attacks in Iran, which has faced similar incidents in the past from various groups, including Islamic State.
No one claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s blasts.
Red Crescent rescuers tended to wounded people at the ceremony, where hundreds of Iranians had gathered to mark the anniversary of Soleimani’s death. Some Iranian news agencies said the number of wounded was much higher.
“I heard a very loud sound and then felt pain in my back … then I could not feel my legs,” a wounded woman at a Kerman hospital told state television.
