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Iran condemned a “terrorist act” and vowed retribution after at least 95 people were killed in two bomb blasts at a ceremony to mark the death of a military commander.
The attacks on Wednesday were the deadliest in the Islamic republic in decades, hitting crowds gathering in the southern city of Kerman to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Qassem Soleimani, a former Revolutionary Guards leader, who was assassinated by the US in 2020.
The Iranian health minister said 95 people had been killed in the twin explosions, and 211 injured, with 27 in a critical condition. Iranian officials quoted by state television had earlier said 103 people had been killed.
The attacks came amid high tensions across the Middle East triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the Jewish state’s subsequent offensive in Gaza.
Tasnim, a news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, said two explosive-laden bags had been placed at the entrance to the cemetery in Kerman and that the perpetrators had detonated them remotely.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said those behind the attacks “should know that this tragedy will have a tough response”, while President Ebrahim Raisi vowed the “pursuit and identification of the planners and perpetrators” of the “terrorist act”. Tehran has not blamed a specific group or country.
While there was no claim of responsibility, Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani’s successor, said the attacks, and the killing of a senior Revolutionary Guards commander in Syria last week, would not deter Iran and groups in the region from “uprooting the Zionist regime”. His comments were the first by a senior Iranian figure linking the Kerman explosions to regional tensions.
Matthew Miller, a US state department spokesman, said America “was not involved in any way, and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous”. Washington had “no reason to believe that Israel was involved”, he added.
The two explosions happened minutes apart, with the second striking people who had rushed to the scene, according to Iranian officials. Most casualties occurred during the second explosion. The first had gone off about 700 metres from Soleimani’s grave, while the second took place about 1km away.
The Iranian interior minister said the explosions were severe and that the dispersal of shrapnel had been responsible for many of the deaths.
The site of Wednesday’s attack was highly symbolic. Soleimani was Iran’s most powerful military figure before he was assassinated in Iraq, and is revered as a national hero by the Islamic regime and its supporters.
Iran has blamed previous attacks on militant organisations including the Mujahedin-e Khalq, an exiled opposition group once backed by Iraq, as well as separatist groups and Sunni jihadis.
The Islamic regime has also blamed Israel for several assaults inside the republic since 2010, but these have been targeted attacks against officials who were members of Iran’s military or involved in its nuclear programme. This included an attack in 2020 involving a remote-controlled bomb attached to a vehicle that killed the republic’s top nuclear scientist.
Wednesday’s explosions came a day after Israel was accused of carrying out a drone strike in Beirut that killed a senior Hamas leader and six other members of the Palestinian militant group.
Iran-backed militant groups across the region have launched attacks against Israel and US forces since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7. But Tehran insists the militants it supports act independently and has said it does not want to be drawn into a broader regional conflict, despite its support for Hamas.
Islamic State, the Sunni jihadist movement, has previously carried out attacks in Iran, a predominantly Shia nation, including an attempted assault on the parliament building in Tehran and the mausoleum of the republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini in 2017.
The following year, gunmen opened fire on a military parade in the city of Ahvaz, killing dozens of people, including members of the Revolutionary Guards.
A senior US administration official said the explosions bore the hallmarks of the terror group. “It does look like a terrorist attack, as a type of thing we’ve seen ISIS do in the past,” the official said, adding that this was “our going assumption at the moment”.
Additional reporting by Bita Ghaffari in Tehran, Lauren Fedor in Washington and Mehul Srivastava in Tel Aviv
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