The Islamic State group (IS) took responsibility this Thursday for Wednesday’s attack in Kerman, southern Iran, which caused 84 deaths, during a tribute to General Qasem Soleimani, assassinated by the United States in 2020.
According to official data, the double explosion also caused 284 injuries, some of them in serious condition, so the total number of fatalities could increase.
In a statement released through its channels on the Telegram social network, ISIS stated that two of its members “went towards a large gathering” of people near Soleimani’s grave in Kerman and “detonated their explosive belts.”
The Islamic State identified the two attackers as Omar al-Mowhid and Saifallah al-Mujaahid, who carried out the attack that left 284 injured, 220 of whom remain hospitalized, according to Iranian authorities, who had previously claimed that the attacks were “suicides.” “. .
The terrorist attack occurred at a time when thousands of people were participating in ceremonies to commemorate the death of Soleimani, assassinated in Baghdad in 2020 by order of then-President of the United States, Donald Trump.
The attack targeted a crowd gathered at a memorial ceremony near the Saheb al-Zaman mosque, which houses the tomb of General Soleimani, the “architect” of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, assassinated in January 2020 by a American attack in Iraq. and who is celebrated in his country for his role in defeating the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
The first explosion occurred around 2:45 p.m. local time, about 700 meters from the Iranian general’s tomb, and the second 15 minutes later.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had previously promised a “severe response” to the “diabolical and criminal enemies of the Iranian nation” who carried out the attack.
For his part, the head of the Qods force, the foreign operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Esmail Qaani, had suggested, in response to IS claims, that the perpetrators of the attack had been “supplied by the United States and the Zionist regime”.
The former chairman of the Iranian Parliamentary Committee on National Security, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, maintained that the attacks “would not have been possible without” the US and Israeli secret services.
The State Department in Washington considered “absurd” any suggestion of involvement by the United States or Israel, whose government did not comment on the attack.
For Ali Vaez, a researcher specializing in Iran at the International Crisis Group, the double explosion “corresponds to the modus operandi” of IS.
The attack “does not have the characteristics of previous secret Israeli operations in Iran,” he said on the social network X (formerly Twitter), referring to the assassinations of nuclear officials attributed to Israel.
If the attack had been carried out by Israel, Váez considered, “it would have been part of a maximum provocation campaign,” especially after the recent Israeli attack against Hamas number two in Beirut and the elimination, near Damascus, of a high-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Guard.
The attack was the deadliest in Iran since 1978, when an arson attack killed at least 377 people at an Abadan cinema, according to AFP archives.
Faced with one of the most brutal attacks in recent decades in Iran, the authorities of the Islamic Republic guaranteed that the “perpetrators” of the attack will be arrested by the security forces and secret services and that their supporters “will fear the wrath of the nation.” Iranian”.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for several attacks on Iranian soil in the past, the most recent being, before the Kerman attack, an attack on a mausoleum in the southern city of Shiraz, which killed 15 people in October 2022.
Source: TSF
