Explosions at a cemetery in Iran have killed at least 95 people and wounded at least 211 others, state-run media has reported.
The blasts took place at a ceremony on Wednesday, honouring the fourth anniversary of when the prominent Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike in 2020.
They shook the city of Kerman, about 510 miles southeast of the capital, Tehran with the second blast spraying shrapnel into a screaming crowd fleeing the first explosion.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack which deputy governor of Kerman, Rahman Jalali, called "terroristic".
He did not elaborate on who could be behind them, amid wider tensions in the Mideast over Israel's ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq. The attacks came a day after a deputy head of the Palestinian terror group Hamas was killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Beirut.Iranian state TV and state-run IRNA news agency quoted emergency officials for the casualty figures. Authorities said Thursday would be a national day of mourning.Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the attackers will face "aharsh response," though he didn't name any possible suspects.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi added: "Undoubtedly, the perpetrators and leaders of this cowardly act will soon be identified and punished."While Israel has carried out attacks in Iran over its nuclear program, it has conducted targeted assassinations, not mass casualty bombings.
A U.S. State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said American officials had "no reason" to believe Israel was involved in Wednesday's attack in Iran.Sunni extremist groups including the Islamic State group have conducted large-scale attacks in the past that killed civilians in Shiite-majority Iran,though not in relatively peaceful Kerman.Iran also has seen mass protests in recent years, including those over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. The country also has been targeted by exile groups in attacks dating back to the turmoil surrounding its 1979 Islamic Revolution.The government of neighboring Iraq expressed condolences to the victims, and the European Union issued a statement offering "its solidarity with the Iranian people."Soleimani was the architect of Iran's regional military activities and is hailed as a national icon among supporters of Iran's theocracy. He also helped secure Syrian President Bashar Assad's government after the 2011 Arab Spring protests against him turned into a civil, and later a regional, war that still rages today.
State TV showed Red Crescent rescuers attending to wounded people at the ceremony.
"Our rapid response teams are evacuating the injured... But there are waves of crowds blocking roads," Reza Fallah, head of the Kerman province Red Crescent told state TV.
