Iran observes day of mourning for 84 killed in twin explosions

Iran observed a day of mourning yesterday for at least 84 people killed when two bombs ripped through a crowd commemorating the slain Revolutionary Guards general Qasem Soleimani. The death toll was revised down from around 100 the day after what Iranian authorities labelled a "terrorist attack” that also wounded hundreds near Soleimani’s tomb in the southern city of Kerman.No one claimed responsibility for the bombings in Iran, which has suffered deadly attacks in the past from militants as well as targeted killings of officials and nuclear scientists blamed on arch foe Israel. The blasts ripped through crowds who had come to honour Soleimani, four years after a targeted US drone strike in Baghdad killed the veteran senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Investigators have confirmed that the first blast, which struck at around 2:45pm, some 700m from Soleimani’s grave, was detonated by a "suicide bomber”, the official IRNA news agency reported Thursday. Investigations are continuing into the trigger for the second explosion but it was "very probably another suicide bomber”, IRNA said, citing an "informed source”. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday blamed "evil and criminal enemies” of the Islamic republic, without naming them, and vowed a "harsh response”.Regional tensions have surged amid the Gaza war. President Ebrahim Raisi’s deputy chief of staff for political affairs, Mohamed Jamshidi, charged on social media platform X that "the responsibility for this crime lies with the US and Zionist (Israeli) regimes, and terrorism is just a tool”.The United States rejected any suggestion that it or its ally Israel were behind the bombings, while Israel declined to comment. "The United States was not involved in any way, and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. "We have no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion,” he added, expressing sympathies to the victims of the "horrific” explosions and their families.Soleimani, who headed the Guards’ foreign operations arm the Quds Force, was also a staunch enemy of the extremist Islamic State group which has carried out attacks in Iran.Revising down the death toll, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told IRNA "the number of martyrs...has been announced as 84 so far.” Iran’s emergency services chief Jafar Miadfar pointed to difficulties identifying dismembered bodies and said some victims were mistakenly counted "several times”. He said 284 people were wounded and "195 are still hospitalised”.Revered by many Iranians, Soleimani oversaw Iranian military operations across the Middle East, and millions came to his funeral in 2020. Current Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani suggested the Kerman crowd was "attacked by bloodthirsty people supplied by the United States and the Zionist regime”.He pointed to two recent killings widely blamed on Israel - a Beirut strike on Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri, and the killing near Damascus of senior Guards commander Razi Moussavi in December."The killing of Aruri and people like Razi Moussavi and the crime in Kerman show how desperate the enemy is,” Qaani said. Iran regularly accuses its arch foes Israel and the United States of inciting unrest, and authorities last month executed five people convicted of collaborating with Israel.In July, Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had disbanded a network "linked to Israel’s spy organisation” that it said had been plotting "terrorist operations” across Iran.In September, the Fars news agency reported that an IS-affiliated key "operative”, in charge of carrying out "terrorist operations”, had been arrestedin Kerman.