Explosions in Iran near Qasem Soleimani‘s burial site, at least 95 killed

Two explosions rocked Iran’s south-central city of Kerman near the cemetery where slain Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani is buried, Iranian state media outlets reported.

Iran’s Health Minister Bahram Eynollahi said that at least 95 people had been killed and several hundred others injured. The number was revised down from an earlier death toll of 103, with the discrepancy occuring due to some names being registered twice, according to the minister. 

“The incident is a terrorist attack,” Rahman Jalali, the deputy governor of Kerman province, told the state-run IRNA news agency.

The cause of the blast remains unknown, with unconfirmed reports saying gas canisters exploded on the road leading to Soleimani’s cemetery.

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 his death, Mehr News Agency reported Wednesday, without adding more details.

Soleimani led the elite Quds Force of Iran’s IRGC until 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 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 raises 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.

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.