The attack perpetrated on Wednesday in Iran was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) organization on Thursday January 4. The double explosion took place near the tomb of General Ghassem Soleimani, former architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, whose death the country commemorated in 2020. The latest report from this attack shows 84 dead.
On its Telegram channels, the jihadist group announced that two of its members have “activated their explosive belt” between “a large gathering of apostates near the tomb of their leader Ghassem Soleimani yesterday in Kerman, southern Iran”.
This attack is part of a campaign called “And kill them wherever you find them”, according to the IS press release. A few minutes before the claim, the organization had broadcast an audio recording of its spokesperson affirming that this campaign was being carried out “in support of Muslims wherever they are, particularly in Palestine”.
Deadliest attack in Iran
This is the deadliest attack in Iran since 1978, according to Agence France-Presse archives, when an arson attack left at least 377 dead in a cinema in Abadan.
In addition to the 84 deaths, the attack caused “284 injured, among whom 195 are still hospitalized”, the head of the country’s emergency services, Jafar Miadfar, said on state television. According to him, the degraded state of some bodies after the explosion made it difficult to identify the victims.
The latter took place near the Saheb Al-Zaman mosque, which houses the tomb of General Soleimani, killed in January 2020 in an American drone attack in Iraq.
The attack occurred in a very tense regional context since the start of the conflict in October between Israel and Hamas, with Iranian officials having accused Tel Aviv and Washington. In the United States, the State Department had judged ” absurd “ any suggestion of involvement by the United States or Israel, which, for its part, did not react.