Jan. 3 (UPI) — At least 73 people were killed and 170 injured Wednesday in an apparent terrorist attack in the Iranian city of Kerman at a ceremony marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of the prominent Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an U.S. airstrike.
The first blast took place about 760 yards from Soleimani’s tomb in an underpass at the edge of a cemetery 500 miles southeast of Tehran and the second about two-thirds of a mile away near Sahibul Zaman Mosque, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Officials said the blasts, 10 minutes apart, were from two bombs remotely detonated by terrorists but did not state which group might be responsible.
The explosions sent mourners running from the Garden of Martyrs cemetery and ambulances raced to bring the injured to hospitals in the city.
IRNA quoted the province’s head of the Red Crescent, Reza Fallah, as saying about 170 injured people had been brought to area hospitals so far.
Fallah said that a loud explosion was heard and that officials were investigating the cause of the blast.
A security official in Kerman confirming the explosions initially said they may have been caused by a gas cylinder but did not rule out a terror attack.
Soleimani was killed in Baghdad, along with four other Iranians and five Iraqis, in a January 2020 airstrike ordered by then-President Donald Trump President who said the general was planning “imminent and sinister attacks.”
“We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war,” he said at the time.
The Pentagon accused Soleimani of plotting to attack American diplomats and service personnel in the Middle East and said it held him and the military forces he oversaw accountable for the killing of hundreds of U.S. and coalition troops and the wounding of many more.
They also accused Soleimani of backing a Dec. 29, 2019, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, in which no one was killed or seriously hurt, and organizing an attack on a base in northern Iraq two days earlier in which a U.S. contractor died.
The cemetery where Soleimani is buried, along with 1,024 other people regarded as martyrs, has become a pilgrimage site and focal point for those who back the so-called “axis of resistance” against the United States and the West.
It remains unclear whether Wednesday’s attack was carried out by domestic opponents of the regime or a proxy of Israel, which has in the past targeted Iran’s nuclear weapons program and individuals associated with it.
A Christmas Day Israeli airstrike on Damascus killed Sardar Seyed Razi Mousavi, a high-ranking member of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has vowed to avenge his death.
