Two explosions minutes apart on Wednesday in Iran targeted a memorial ceremony for a prominent general killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2020. At least 103 people were killed and at least 141 others injured as the Middle East remains on edge over Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for what Iranian state media described as a “terrorist” attack shortly after the attacks in Kerman, about 510 miles southeast of the capital Tehran.
Although Israel has carried out attacks in Iran because of its nuclear program, it has carried out targeted assassinations, not mass casualty bombings. Sunni extremist groups, including the Islamic State group (ISIS), have carried out large-scale attacks in the past, killing civilians in Shiite-majority Iran, but not in relatively peaceful Kerman.
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Iran has also seen mass protests in recent years, including over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. The country has also been the target of attacks by exile groups dating back to unrest surrounding the 1979 Islamic Revolution .
The explosions came on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020. The explosions occurred near his gravesite in Kerman.
Iranian emergency services reach the site where two explosions in quick succession shook a crowd on January 3, 2024, marking the anniversary of the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in 2020. MORE NEWS/AFP via Getty Images
Iranian state television quoted Babak Yektaparast, a spokesman for the country's emergency services, on the number of victims. Authorities said some people were injured in the subsequent escape.
Footage suggested the second explosion occurred about 15 minutes after the first. A delayed second explosion is often used by militants to target emergency personnel responding to the scene and inflict even more casualties.
People could be heard screaming on state television.
Kerman Deputy Governor Rahman Jalali called the attack “terrorist” without elaborating. Iran has several enemies that could be behind the attack, including exile groups, militant organizations and state actors. Iran has supported Hamas, as well as the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
At a briefing on Wednesday, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said it was too early to say who or what might have caused the explosions, but stressed: “The United States was involved in no way, and any to the contrary.” The claim is ridiculous.”
He also said: “We have no information to suggest that Israel was involved in this explosion.”
Asked whether the U.S. had assessed who was responsible for the Iran bombing, a senior administration official told reporters: “It actually looks like a terrorist attack like we've seen in the past from ISIS.”
Soleimani was the architect of Iran's regional military activities and is celebrated as a national icon among supporters of Iran's theocracy. He also helped secure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government after the 2011 Arab Spring protests against him turned into a civil war and later a regional war that rages to this day.
Soleimani was relatively unknown in Iran until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, but his popularity and mystery grew after American officials called for his killing because he armed militants with penetrating roadside bombs that killed and maimed U.S. soldiers.
A decade and a half later, Soleimani was Iran's best-known field commander on the battlefield. He ignored calls to enter politics but grew as powerful, if not more so, than his civilian leadership.
Ultimately, the general was killed by a drone strike launched by the Trump administration, part of escalating incidents that followed the U.S.'s unilateral withdrawal from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.
Soleimani's death has sparked large processions in the past. A stampede broke out at his funeral in Kerman in 2020, killing at least 56 people and injuring more than 200 as thousands took part in the procession. Otherwise, Kerman was largely spared from the recent unrest and attacks in Iran. The city and province of the same name is located on the central desert plateau of Iran.
–Olivia Gazis contributed reporting from the State Department.