Huge crowds gather in Iran as funeral ceremonies for assassinated supreme leader begin

AFP -- Vast crowds of Iranians massed in Tehran on Saturday to begin almost a week of funeral ceremonies for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who was assassinated in a US-Israeli strike on the first day of the Middle East conflict — an event intended to send a message of defiance to the West after the US-Iran war.

Clad in black and waving blood-red flags seen as a call for vengeance and justice, mourners thronged the Grand Mosalla religious complex in Tehran, AFP correspondents said.

Authorities believe the ceremonies will mobilise more than 10 million people in the capital alone for tributes to the man who ran the country for three-and-a-half decades.

Six days of funeral ceremonies are planned to commemorate Khamenei, who ruled the Islamic republic as its number one from 1989 until his assassination aged 86 on the first day of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28.

AFP photographs showed the coffins of Khamenei and four other family members at the front on a dais.

There was still no sign of Khamenei’s son and successor, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has been unseen in public since being named supreme leader a week after the killing of his father.

Other top Iranian officials who survived the war welcomed foreign dignitaries who paid their respects at the coffin on Friday before the complex opened to the public.

Chants of “death to America” and “revenge, revenge” echoed at the venue.

“The leader was a father to us all. With his passing, we have all been left orphaned… There was no one like him. He was truly unique and peerless,” said Mohammad Mirsalehi, a 38-year-old cleric.

“We came (to the funeral) because we promised the supreme leader we would stand by him to the very end,” 37-year-old university professor Reza, who gave only one name, told AFP.

“For a long time, we shouted that we would sacrifice our lives for the leader, but it was he who sacrificed himself for us.”

Javad Akbari, 43, a food-processing plant worker, said: “I never had the chance to see the supreme leader up close, and I regret that. Today, I have come to bid him a final farewell.”

An AFP journalist saw mourners walking several kilometres to reach the venue. Hundreds of supporters of the Islamic republic had begun arriving on Friday evening outside the Grand Mosalla.

“We want to say a final goodbye to our leader, which is why waiting like this isn’t painful or difficult for us,” Somayye Hamedi told AFP.

Significant security measures have been imposed, with roads blocked and airspace expected to be closed for what is set to be the largest-scale public event in Iran since the burial of Khamenei’s predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989.