Throngs mourn, leader weeps for general slain by US
TEHRAN, IRAN (AP):
IRAN’S SUPREME leader wept yesterday over the casket of a top general killed in a United States (US) airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying that has drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.
The funeral for Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least one million.
Authorities later brought his remains and others to Iran’s holy city of Qom, turning out another massive crowd.
It was an unprecedented honour for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force. The US blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death on
Friday. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.
His death already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.
Soleimani’s daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the US military in the Mideast while also warning President Donald Trump, whom she called “crazy”.
“The families of the American soldiers ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children,” she said to cheers.
Her language mirrored warnings by other Iranian officials who say an attack on US military interests in the Middle East looms. Iranian state television and others online shared a video that showed Trump’s American flag tweet following Soleimani’s killing turn into a coffin, the “likes” of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 “killed”.