Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been buried at the country’s holiest Shia shrine more than four months after he was killed by a US-Israeli strike on his compound in central Tehran.
State media reported early on Friday that he had been buried in his birthplace of Mashhad at the Shrine of Imam Reza, a vast religious complex with a large golden dome and flanking gilded minarets at the heart of the city.
The burial ceremony was private but followed a week of public mourning and processions that drew huge crowds totalling more than 15 million people, and possibly more than double that according to Iranian estimates.
One person apparently absent from the funeral events, however, was Khamenei’s son and successor as supreme leader, Mojtaba, who has not been seen in public since the attack on February 28 that killed his father and signalled the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran.
Khamenei’s funeral had initially been due to be held in March but was postponed as Iran was plunged into war.
The official public funeral proceedings finally began last Saturday when tens of thousands of Iranians gathered at the Grand Mosalla religious complex in Tehran where Khamenei’s coffin was on display. Invited delegations from Iran’s regional allies Hamas and Islamic Jihad from Gaza, Hezbollah from Lebanon and the Houthis from Yemen were in attendance. An even larger crowd gathered at the mosque the following day.
At least 12 million people thronged the streets of the capital on Monday as the coffin was slowly driven on the back of a truck on a 10km (six-mile) procession to Azadi Square, the vast plaza in western Tehran that has served as the stage for the Islamic Republic’s largest gatherings ever since the 1979 Revolution.
On Tuesday, several hundred thousand people crowded onto the streets of the holy city of Qom for another procession with Khamenei’s coffin, which was then flown to neighbouring Iraq where it was driven on Wednesday through Najaf, the third holiest city in Shia Islam, and Karbala, another city with special status for Shias.
