Two explosions rocked Iran's south-central city of Kerman near the cemetery where Qasem Soleimani, the slain commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, is buried, Iranian state media outlets reported.
Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahido said that 84 people had been killed and several hundred others injured. The number was revised down from an earlier death toll of 103, with the discrepancy occurring due to some names being registered twice, according to Health Minister Bahram Eynollahi.
“The incident is a terrorist attack,” Rahman Jalali, deputy governor of Kerman province, told IRNA, the state-run news agency.
The cause of the blast remains unknown, with unconfirmed reports saying gas canisters exploded on the road leading to Soleimani’s cemetery. The cause is being investigated.
BREAKING: 2ND INCIDENT IN IRAN ON THE ROAD LEADING GO KERMAN MARTYRS GULZAR IN pic.twitter.com/7DVYhvFc6R
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) January 3, 2024
US State Department spokesman Matt Miller denied the United States was "involved in any way" in the explosion. "Any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous," he said on Wednesday, adding that Washington has "no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion."
Thousands of people were at the cemetery marking the fourth anniversary of Soleimani's death, Mehr News Agency reported Wednesday, without adding more details.
Soleimani was head of the elite Quds Force, part of the IRGC, when he was killed in a US drone attack in Baghdad in 2020.
The explosion comes at a critical time in the region. On Tuesday, Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri was killed in what is widely believed to have been a drone strike that hit a building in southern Beirut where Palestinian officials were reportedly meeting. Five other members of Hamas were killed in the strike.
Arouri, the deputy head of the movement’s political bureau, was the main link between Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah. His death increases the risk of the Israel-Hamas war expanding to Lebanon and elsewhere in the region.
Iran-backed Hezbollah is already exchanging heavy fire with the Israeli military along the Israel-Lebanon border in a show of solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues the military offensive it launched in response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel.
In a statement on Tuesday, Hezbollah threatened to respond to Arouri’s death.
“We, Hezbollah, affirm that this crime will not go unanswered or unpunished,” the movement said, calling the Israeli strike “a dangerous development in the course of the war.”
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is due to deliver a speech on Wednesday.
This is a breaking story that will be updated.
