Mourners accompanied a casket carrying the remains of the slain Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on Sunday as part of a grand funeral procession across the Islamic Republic for the commander killed by a US drone strike.
Tens of thousands of people in the northeastern city of Mashhad watched Soleimani’s body being transported by truck to Imam Reza shrine during Sunday’s funeral procession.
Earlier that day, his body had been taken to Ahvaz, southwestern Iran, a city that was a focus of fighting during the bloody, 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran in which the general slowly grew to prominence.
His remains will then travel to the capital Tehran and Qom on Monday for further public mourning processions, followed by his hometown of Kerman for burial on Tuesday.
Soleimani was killed in an airstrike near Iraq’s Baghdad International Airport, ordered by US President Donald Trump on Friday.
Since then, Iran threatened “harsh retaliation” and Trump has said the US would strike 52 sites in the Islamic Republic if any Americans are harmed.
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