The Iranian capital Tehran has bid farewell to the bodies of Sayyed Ebrahim Raisi, his foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and their associates, with the participation of officials and crowds of Iranians who travelled en masse to the capital to attend funeral services.
As part of the funeral ceremony, Sayyed Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic, led prayers over the bodies at Tehran University.
Tehran residents received telephone messages urging them to “attend the funeral of the martyr of the ministry.”
Among the officials attending the funeral services in Tehran were Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political bureau, and Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy secretary general of Hezbollah. The burial ceremony will also take place in the presence of high-ranking foreign delegations in Tehran at 4 p.m.
The bodies of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and their companions were brought to the Imam Khomeini Mosque in Tehran earlier on Tuesday.
A solemn farewell procession took place in the Iranian city of Qom to honour Raisi and his companions, celebrating their services and mourning their loss.
Authorities will then take President Raisi’s body to South Khorasan province in eastern Iran, where a funeral procession will take place on Thursday evening in his hometown of Mashhad, near Imam Reza Holy Shrine, the eighth Imam of Shiite Islam.
Following his death, global allies Russia and China, as well as NATO, expressed their condolences, and the UN Security Council honoured him with a minute’s silence.
The death of Iran’s leader
Raisi’s helicopter crashed into a fog-shrouded mountainside in northwestern Iran on Sunday as he was travelling back to the city of Tabriz after taking part in a ceremony on the border with Azerbaijan.
Then, Turkey, Russia and the European Union have launched massive search and rescue operation. State television announced Raisi’s death early Monday morning.
