Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber vowed revenge yesterday for explosions that killed about 100 people at a ceremony to commemorate top commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a US drone in 2020 in Iraq.
“A very strong retaliation will be handed to them on the hands of the soldiers of Soleimani,” Mokhber told reporters at a hospital where some of the wounded were receiving treatment for the bloodiest attack since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
No one claimed responsibility for the blasts.
Photo: EPA-EFE
A senior official in US President Joe Biden’s administration said the blasts appeared to represent “a terrorist attack” of the type carried out by Islamic State militants.
In a statement, Iran’s Guards described Wednesday’s attack as a cowardly act “aimed at creating insecurity and seeking revenge against the nation’s deep love and devotion to the Islamic Republic.”
The Guards also said the attack “strengthens the resolve to decisively and justly punish the perpetrators.”
The Guards commander in the southeastern city of Kerman denied state media reports of a shooting in Kerman yesterday.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the “heinous and inhumane crime,” and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge for the twin bombings.
Iran’s Red Crescent rescuers tended to wounded people at the ceremony, where hundreds had gathered to mark the anniversary of Soleimani’s killing.
Some Iranian news agencies said the number of wounded was much higher.
Tehran often accuses Israel and the US of backing anti-Iran militant groups.
In 2022, Sunni militant group the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a Shiite shrine in Iran killed 15 people.
Earlier attacks claimed by the group include twin bombings in 2017 that targeted Iran’s parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Baluchi militants and ethnic Arab separatists have also staged attacks in Iran.
The US assassination of Soleimani in a Jan. 3, 2020, drone attack at Baghdad airport, and Tehran’s retaliation — by attacking two Iraqi military bases that house US troops — brought the US and Iran close to full-blown conflict.
As chief commander of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Soleimani ran clandestine operations abroad and was a key figure in Iran’s longstanding campaign to drive US forces from the Middle East.
Tensions between Iran and Israel, along with its ally the US, have reached a new high over Israel’s war on Iran-backed Hamas militants in Gaza in retaliation for their Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia have attacked ships they say have links to Israel in the entrance to the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
US forces have come under attack from Iran-backed militants in Iraq and Syria over Washington’s backing of Israel and have carried out their own retaliatory airstrikes.
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