Huge crowds throng Soleimani's hometown as region on edge

TEHRAN - Dozens of people were killed in a stampede among huge crowds of mourners at the funeral ceremony for a slain military commander in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman on Tuesday, forcing his burial to be postponed, state-affiliated media reported.

Tens of thousands of people had poured on to the streets of Kerman to pay tribute to General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday. Many chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".

"The martyr Qassem Soleimani is more powerful... now that he is dead," said the Revolutionary Guards' top general, Major General Hossein Salami.

"The enemy killed him unjustly," he told the sea of black-clad mourners. Schoolgirls joined chants of "Death to Trump" from the crowd, an AFP correspondent reported.

Tuesday's stampede broke out amid the crush of mourners, killing 50 people, Iran's ISNA news agency said, quoting the chief coroner for Kerman province, Abbas Amian. About 213 people were injured, an emergency services official told the semi-official Fars news agency.

"Today because of the heavy congestion of the crowd unfortunately a number of our fellow citizens who were mourning were injured and a number were killed," emergency medical services chief Pirhossein Kolivand told state television.

Soleiman's body had been taken to Iraqi and other Iranian cities before arriving in his hometown Kerman for burial, prompting mass outpourings of grief nationwide as the coffin was carried through streets. The massive number of mourners in the slain commander's hometown appeared to match the huge turnout seen in the cities of Tehran, Qom, Mashhad and Ahvaz.

People had also converged from afar on Tehran's Azadi Square on Monday, where two flag-draped coffins were on display, with the second one reportedly containing the remains of Soleimani's closest aide, Brigadier General Hossein Pourjafari. Five members of the Iranian Guards were reportedly killed in the US strike in Iraq, as well as five members of Iraq's Iran-backed Shiite paramilitaries.

'Boils the blood'

"We're here today to pay respects to the great commander of the holy defence," said one of the mourners who came from the southern city of Shiraz to attend the funeral in Kerman.

"Haj Qassem was not only loved in Kerman, or Iran, but also the whole world," Hemmat Dehghan told AFP news agency.

"The security of the whole world, Muslims, Shiites, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and especially Iran, all owe it to him," said the 56-year-old war veteran.

Another mourner said Soleimi's assassination "boils the blood of the Iranian people".

"He was seen as a great man who was ready to serve his people both then in the war and now. He must certainly be avenged," said Sara Khaksar, an 18-year-old student.

Friday's assassination of the 62-year-old Soleimani heightened international concern about a new war in the volatile Middle East and rattled financial markets.

Iraq's parliament has demanded the government expel the 5,200 American troops stationed in the country in response to the drone attack which also killed top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The vote for that non-binding resolution fell short of the required quorum, and the parliament session was boycotted by Sunni lawmakers.

Baghdad also requested in a letter to the UN that the Security Council condemn the US drone strike, so that "the law of the jungle" was not allowed to prevail.

The operation represented "a dangerous escalation that could lead to a devastating war in Iraq, the region and the world," wrote the Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Hussein Bahr-Aluloom.

'Middle East warlord'

In Washington, the US defence secretary denied reports the US military was preparing to withdraw from Iraq, where Tehran has vied with Washington for influence over nearly two decades of war and unrest.

If Iraq's government forces US troops to leave Iraq in protest at the killing, as Baghdad has threatened to do, American soldiers in eastern Syria would lose a vital logistics and supply line and would likely have to pull out as well.

Soleimani's assassination is also likely to rattle thousands of Iran-backed fighters in Syria, with fears that the war-torn country becomes a scene for confrontation with the hundreds of US troops stationed there.

Soleimani was responsible for building up Tehran's network of proxy forces across the Middle East which play a large role in many of the region's ongoing conflicts, including those in Yemen and Syria.

In Syria, Soleimani helped turn the tide in the now nearly 9-year-old civil war, intervening to save dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime as armed rebels reached the capital, Damascus, and seized several key cities.

He brought in and organized thousands of Shiite militiamen from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to back Assad's overstretched military, providing firepower and skills.

He welded together Shiite militias from across the region to back Syria's military and waged a series of sieges that captured back territory, wreaked heavy bloodshed and destruction and prevented the collapse of Assad's state.

His opponents say he introduced some of the most brutal tactics of the war, particularly the use of long, devastating sieges of populated areas that strangled civilians and clawed back territory until resistance collapsed. The tactic killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians and left urban areas in ruins. Moreover, pitting Shiite militias against the largely Sunni opposition deepened the war's sectarian nature and fueled atrocities.

Displaced Syrians celebrated Soleimani's killing when the news first broke, with some videos on social media showing men distributing sweets or shouting thanks to US President Donald Trump. In one of the last opposition-held cities in northern Syria, men danced and sang in a public square.

'Hard and definitive'

US and Iranian warnings of new strikes and retaliation have now stoked concerns about a broader Middle East conflict and led to calls in the US Congress for legislation to stop US President Donald Trump going to war with Iran.

World financial markets have been on edge over the crisis.

"The new year has started with a bang in so far as volatility is concerned," said Fawad Razaqzada at Forex.com.

"This is mainly due to the escalation of tensions between the US and Iran after Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani."

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and military commanders have said Iranian retaliation for the US action on Friday would match the scale of Soleimani's killing but that it would be at a time and place of Tehran's choosing.

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said 13 "revenge scenarios" were being considered, Fars news agency reported. Even the weakest option would prove "a historic nightmare for the Americans," he said.

Iran, whose southern coast stretches along a Gulf oil shipping route that includes the narrow Strait of Hormuz, has allied forces across the Middle East through which it could act. Representatives from those groups, including the Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, attended the funeral event in Tehran.

Despite its strident rhetoric, analysts say Iran will seek to avoid any conventional conflict with the United States but assymetric strikes, such as sabotage or other more limited military actions, are more likely.

Trump has promised strikes on 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites, if Iran retaliates, although US officials sought to downplay his reference to cultural targets.