TEHRAN
\nPrayers were held Sunday over the casket of Iran\u2019s late supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the second day of funeral ceremonies that have drawn huge crowds to pay their final respects in Tehran.
\nKhamenei ruled the Islamic republic from 1989 until he was killed aged 86 in an airstrike on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran on February 28.
\nSunday\u2019s service at Tehran\u2019s Grand Mosalla complex was led by prominent Shia cleric Ja\u2019far Sobhani, a 97-year-old scholar who teaches in seminaries at the holy city of Qom. Khamenei\u2019s son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei, who is said to have been wounded in the February 28 attack, has not appeared in public since being named supreme leader and was notably absent from the funeral prayers.
\nThe late supreme leader\u2019s other three sons, Masoud, Mostafa and Meysam, were in attendance. Sunday was declared a public holiday across Iran, and later in the day, Khamenei\u2019s body will be moved from the Grand Mosalla complex where it is lying in state in preparation for processions through the capital on Monday.
\nThe vast religious complex and surrounding streets were packed with mourners on Sunday morning, media journalists saw. With temperatures set to exceed 35C, mourners carrying Iranian flags and portraits of Khamenei, as they made their way to the Grand Mosalla, were handed refreshments.
\nPresident Masoud Pezeshkian attended the ceremony alongside senior officials including parliament speaker and Iran\u2019s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, state television footage showed.
\nKhamenei\u2019s coffin, draped in the Iranian flag and topped with his black turban, was placed alongside the coffins of four relatives also killed in the February strikes, including an infant granddaughter.Authorities have said they expect more than 10 million people to take part in ceremonies in Tehran.
\nAllies in attendance After five weeks of intense hostilities, the Middle East war is on hold after a ceasefire and an initial accord with the US. But both Washington and Tehran have warned they are ready to resume fighting at any time.
\nKhamenei\u2019s funeral is being viewed outside Iran as a test of support for the government following mass protests before the war in January that rights groups say were quelled by a crackdown that left thousands dead.
\n\u201cWhat is observed today in the emotions, tears, and passionate presence of the people in various scenes is the most telling sign of his position among the Iranian nation and the free people of the world,\u201d Pezeshkian said in a speech Saturday, accusing Israel in particular of acting as a \u201cdestabilising factor\u201d in the Middle East.
\n\u201cMuslims have shown that they will not surrender to oppression and bullying,\u201d he added. Khamenei had long pursued a course of confrontation with the West, and Tehran for years has provided support to anti-US and anti-Israel armed groups around the region, including Palestinian Hamas and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah.
\nDelegations from both groups met with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday, state media reported, while representatives of Yemen\u2019s Houthi rebels and Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad were also in attendance at the funeral. After Monday\u2019s procession, Khamenei\u2019s coffin will be moved on Tuesday to Qom, then on Wednesday to neighboring Iraq, before the burial on Thursday in his northeastern hometown of Mashhad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TEHRAN Prayers were held Sunday over the casket of Iran\u2019s late supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the second day of funeral ceremonies that have drawn huge crowds to pay their final respects in Tehran. Khamenei ruled the Islamic republic from 1989 until he was killed aged 86 in an airstrike on the first day of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99922,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99906\/revisions\/99922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}