Iraqis mourn slain general
MASS GRIEF: RALLYING CRY IS ‘DEATH TO AMERICA’ Trump attempts to stave off revenge with threat to attack 52 cultural sites.
Atide of mourners flooded the Iranian city of Ahvaz yesterday, weeping and beating their chests in homage to top general Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a US strike in Baghdad.
“Death to America,” they chanted as they packed the streets and filled a long bridge spanning a river in the southwestern city, where Soleimani’s remains arrived from Iraq before dawn. As Shi’ite chants resonated in the air, mourners held portraits of Soleimani, seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and for spearheading Iran’s Middle East operations as commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force.
Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike on Friday near Baghdad airport, shocking the Islamic republic. He was 62. The attack was ordered by President Donald Trump, who said the Quds commander had been planning an “imminent” attack on US diplomats and American forces in Iraq.
In the face of growing Iraqi anger over the US strike, the country’s parliament was expected to vote yesterday on whether to oust the roughly 5 200 American troops in Iraq.
Soleimani’s assassination ratcheted up tensions between arch-enemies Tehran and Washington and sparked fears of a new Middle East war. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed “severe revenge”.
Trump warned late on Saturday that America was targeting 52 sites “important to Iran & Iranian culture” and would hit them “very fast and very hard” if the country attacks US personnel or assets.
He said the choice of 52 targets represented the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Iran’s top diplomat, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted that “targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME” and a red line in international law. In Tehran, deputies chanted “death to America” in parliament, semi-official news agency ISNA reported. “Trump, this is the voice of the Iranian nation, listen,” speaker Ali Larijani was quoted as saying.