BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than three dozen people died in a stampede during the state funeral procession for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani on Tuesday as his coffin made its way through his hometown in southeastern Iran, a semiofficial Iranian news outlet said.
The head of Iran’s emergency medical services said that 40 people had died and 213 were injured, according to Fars, a news agency associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as millions of people flooded the streets of Kerman to witness the procession for General Suleimani.
General Suleimani was killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad last week, and his death has magnified tensions between the United States and Iran, fueling fears of a broader conflict as the two sides trade increasingly dire threats.
The overcrowding and the subsequent stampede in Kerman led the authorities to delay General Suleimani’s burial, the state news media reported. It was unclear when he will be buried.
Pictures of the procession showed an elaborately decorated truck bearing General Suleimani’s coffin through streets packed so densely with mourners that, in overhead photographs, the ground was not visible.
Many in the crowd wore black and carried pictures of the dead commander, whose face also looked out from billboards and banners hung from buildings. Others waved red flags that in Shiite Islam have come to symbolize the blood of the sect’s most revered martyr, Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad. (The red flag does not signify a call for revenge, as some news outlets have reported.)
Several top-ranking military officials also attended the procession, according to ISNA, a state-run news agency.
“Unfortunately, as a result of a stampede, some of our compatriots have been injured and some have been killed during the funeral processions,” Pirhossein Koulivand, the head of the Iranian emergency medical services, told IRIB, the state broadcaster.
Mr. Koulivand told the state-run broadcaster Press TV that Iran’s health minister, Saeid Namaki, was in Kerman and was monitoring the emergency response.
Images and videos posted on social media showed the aftermath of the crush, with emergency workers and bystanders trying to resuscitate people lying on the ground. The bodies of other victims, jackets covering their faces, could be seen nearby.
Witnesses said on social media and on the BBC’s Persian service that the street leading to the funeral was too narrow to handle the crowd, and that some side streets had been closed off for security reasons, leaving those who were caught in the crush with no place to escape.
The general’s body had been flown to Kerman after a funeral service on Monday in Tehran, the capital, where there were even bigger crowds. He had requested a burial in his hometown.
Vivian Yee reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Megan Specia from London. Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York.
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2020-01-07 12:44:00Z
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