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At least 50 killed in stampede as thousands attend Qassem Soleimani’s funeral in Iran
- Iranian officials say at least 50 are dead and over 200 injured in a stampede in Kerman during the slain general’s funeral procession
- The leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened to ‘set ablaze’ places supported by the US, sparking cries from the crowd
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At least 50 people have been killed and over 200 injured in a stampede at the funeral procession for Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, Iranian media reported on Tuesday.
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The Revolutionary Guard general was killed in a US air strike in Baghdad last week.
The panic broke out at the burial in Soleimani’s hometown of Kerman in southeast Iran, where Tuesday was declared a public holiday in a move aimed at encouraging as many people as possible to pay their respects to the general.
Earlier media reports said hundreds of thousands of people were attending the burial procession with nearly all television stations in the country showing masses of people moving from the city centre to the martyrs’ graveyard where Soleimani is to be buried.
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The burial had to be postponed for a while as there was no way to get Soleimani’s corpse to the cemetery through the masses of people in the streets. It has since started.
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