Two bombs exploded, killing at least 103 people, on Wednesday, at a commemoration for a prominent Iranian general slain by the U.S. in a 2020 drone strike, Iranian officials said.
This is as the Middle East remains on edge over Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the deadliest militant attack to target Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s leaders vowed to punish those responsible for the blasts, which wounded at least 211 people.
The blasts were minutes apart. They shook the Kerman city, about 820 kilometres (510 miles) southeast of Tehran.
The second blast sprayed shrapnel into a screaming crowd fleeing the first explosion.
A gathering marked the fourth anniversary of the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq.
The explosions occurred near his gravesite as long lines of people gathered for the event.
Iranian state television and officials described the attacks as bombings, without immediately giving clear details of what happened.
The attacks came a day after a suspected Israeli strike killed a deputy head of the Palestinian fighters group, Hamas, in Beirut.
Perpetrators detonated the first bomb on Wednesday around 3.00 p.m. And the other went off some 20 minutes later, the Iranian interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, told state television.
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Vahidi said the second blast killed and wounded the most people.
Images and videos shared on social media appeared to correspond with the accounts of officials.
Officials said the first blast happened about 700 meters (765 yards) from Soleimani’s grave. The grave is located in the Kerman Martyrs Cemetery near a parking lot.
The crowd then rushed west along Shohada Street, where the second blast struck about one kilometre (0.62 miles) from the grave.
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