ISIS has claimed credit for a double suicide bomb attack on Wednesday that killed at least 84 people at a ceremony honoring Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani on the fourth anniversary of his death.
The fundamentalist terrorist group issued a statement on Telegram on Thursday taking credit for the massacre in the city of Kerman, which marked the worst terrorist attack carried out by the Islamic Republic in decades as unrest spreads across the Middle East.
Experts who confirmed the statement believe the extremists were trying to take advantage of regional instability sparked by the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
They speculated that ISIS might be trying to expand Israel’s war in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip by attacking the ceremony honoring Soleimani, who was killed by a US airstrike in Baghdad in early 2020.
Some 284 people paying their respects to the military leader were also injured in Wednesday’s attack. SARE TAJALLI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Wednesday’s attack also wounded about 284 people who were paying their respects to the military leader, who had led a network of militias that attacked U.S. troops during the prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised a “tough response” to the explosions, one of which ripped chunks of asphalt from the blood-stained road, suggesting the explosive had been packed with shrapnel to cause damage. even greater.
“I didn’t understand what exactly happened, this happened very suddenly,” said Mohammad Mehdi Ghalekhani, a volunteer with the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij force who was wounded in the “horrible” attack.
ISIS has claimed credit for suicide bombings in Iran on Wednesday that killed at least 84 people. asnim News Agency via ZUMA / SplashNews.com
“When this happened, many people died and most were injured. “Those who died did not have any part of their bodies intact: neither hands nor entire faces.”
ISIS identified the suicide bombers as Omar al-Mowahed and Seif-Allah al-Mujahed, adding that both detonated explosive vests.
Attacks on transport ships in the Red Sea by Iran-backed Houthi rebels based in Yemen and alleged Israeli airstrikes on terrorist targets in Lebanon and Syria in recent days have added to regional unrest and empowered ISIS to unleash his brutal attack, experts suggested.
People gather near a body lying on the ground at the site of the explosions. Via REUTERS
“This falls within ISIS’s modus operandi, especially since it was a mass-casualty attack,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“They are something like [comic book character] The guason. They want to see the world burn. “They don’t care how it happens as long as it benefits them.”
Iran had indirectly blamed Israel for the attack and did not immediately acknowledge that ISIS was to blame.
On Thursday in Kerman, residents stepped on signs with the Israeli flag and the slogan “Death to Israel.”
A masked Islamic State soldier holds the ISIL banner in the desert. Images by History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Iranian state media said an explosion occurred about a mile away from Soleimani’s crypt, outside a security perimeter. The second explosion occurred more than a mile away from the scene.
“The moment I turned to say to my husband’s sister, ‘Let’s go to the square,’ the bomb exploded,” Mahdieh Sazmand, 38, said from her hospital bed.
“If we had taken just 10 more steps, we would have been right on top of the bomb.”
With post cables
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Source: vtt.edu.vn