Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has prayed over the caskets of the top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and others killed in a U.S. airstrike near the Baghdad airport last week.
The general’s successor, Easmail Ghaani stood near his side, as did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei wept at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead. The crowd and others wailed. Afterwards, the crowd screamed: “Death to America!”
Soleimani’s daughter threatens the US
Earlier today, the Soleimani’s daughter threatened an attack on the U.S. military in the Mideast while speaking to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tehran that stretched as far as the eye could see.
“The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for the death of their children,” she said to cheers”, Zeinab Soleimani said.
Huge crowds have gathered in the centre of Tehran on the second day of funeral processions on Monday.
The day before, mourners, spreading across several kilometres, chanted slogans anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans against a background of funeral songs broadcast over loudspeakers.
This was the first time Iran honoured a single man with a multi-city ceremony since the 1989 funeral for the Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. According to Iranian state tv, millions of people took to the streets on Sunday morning as his body was passed through the frantic crowds.