Tens of thousands of people took to the streets on Tuesday in the Iranian holy city of Qom during a fourth day of funeral proceedings for the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The remains of Khamenei, who was killed in late February on the first day of the US-Israeli war against Iran, are lying in state at the Jamkaran Mosque in Qom, a holy city that houses Shia Islam’s most influential seminaries and shrines.
Aerial footage broadcast by state television showed the streets of Qom — home to about 1.5 million people — packed with mourners.
A prayer service was held inside the mosque by Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, a 93-year-old ayatollah and influential Shia figure in the Islamic Republic.
The massive crowd at the service chanted in unison, “death to America”, a rallying cry frequently heard at official gatherings in Iran.
Other television footage showed mourners, including clerics wearing turbans, paying their respects at the coffins of Khamenei and four relatives killed alongside him, including a granddaughter reportedly only 14 months old.
A procession then followed with a truck carrying the bodies towards the mausoleum of Fatima Masumeh, the sister of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia imam, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. (AFP)
