Thirty-five people have been killed and 48 injured in a stampede that erupted at a funeral procession for an Iranian general killed in a US air strike,
Iran state TV has said.
The number of casualties has yet to be independently confirmed.
The body of Soleimani, killed in a US air strike, reached his hometown of Kerman for burial on Tuesday after a tour of holy sites in the country.
Mourners in Kerman dressed in black carried posters bearing the image of Soleimani.
It isn’t known how many were at the funeral, but a crowd said by
police to be in the millions filled Tehran’s streets on Monday as the general’s death prompted Iran’s supreme leader to weep over his coffin.Although there was no independent estimate of Monday’s proceedings, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least one million, and the throngs were visible on satellite images of Tehran.
The outpouring of grief was an unprecedented honour for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force.
The US blames him for the killing of
American troops in
Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death on Friday in a drone strike near Baghdad’s airport.
Soleimani also led forces in
Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war, and he also served as the point man for Iranian proxies in countries such as Iraq,
Lebanon and Yemen.
His killing has already pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015
nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge.
In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow militants from so-called
Islamic State to mount a comeback.
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