Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Thousands of Iranians attended a state-organized funeral on Tuesday for 400 soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. He has lashed out at them, accusing them of inciting anti-government protests in Iran that have been going on for more than three months.
The coffins containing the remains of the “unidentified martyr” were covered with Iranian flags and carried in mass processions. For many Iranian families, the painful legacy of the conflict continues to await news that loved ones are still “missing”.
In January, 250 Iranian soldiers who died in the war of 1980-1988 were buried in a similar ceremony.
Iran has been rocked by mass protests since mid-September over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who died after being detained by the country’s morality police.
The protests quickly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s theocracy established after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s clerical rule in more than 40 years. .
At least 507 protesters were killed and more than 18,500 arrested, according to Iranian human rights activists, a group closely monitoring the riots. Iranian officials have not released the number killed or arrested.
In the capital Tehran, Tuesday’s final farewell honored 200 soldiers recently recovered from former battlefields along the Iraqi-Iranian border. funeral was held. The soldiers’ identities were never determined, and their remains were to be buried in a mass funeral as “unknown martyrs”.
From outside the University of Tehran, a truck with coffins piled high rolled down the street. Men and women dressed in black huddled at the coffin, and many wept for those lost in the bloody stalemate war started by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party in 1980.
Iran and Iraq have sporadically exchanged the remains of soldiers recovered from border areas that witnessed large-scale fighting in the war, leaving both sides with more than one million casualties.
Iranian state television said the bodies buried Tuesday belonged to soldiers killed in four battlefields, including two inside Iraq. Along with the Iranian flag, many also carried a photo of Iran’s top commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
Media reports said President Ebrahim Raisi and other dignitaries attended the ceremony and praised the “martyrs”, saying they were helping to improve the spirit of the country.
At the ceremony, Raisi said efforts by the country’s enemies, a reference to the United States and its allies, aimed to “put pressure on Iran during recent protests” but failed. Enemies including the United States and Israel.
“The arrogance (of the United States and its allies) was displayed in full force in the recent riots,” said Raishi, but “all pressure on the Islamic Republic was doomed to failure.”
In early December, Iran executed two 23-year-old prisoners and charged them in connection with mass protests. The first, Mohsen Shekari, was accused by an Iranian court of blocking the streets of Tehran and attacking members of the country’s security forces with machetes.
The second was Majidreza Rahnavard, whose body was left hanging from a construction crane as a terrifying warning to others. Authorities claimed Rahnavard stabbed two of her paramilitary members. The execution sparked international protests. Dozens of others reportedly remain on the list of executions.
Tuesday’s funeral comes just days before the third anniversary of Iran’s military shooting down a Ukrainian airliner with two surface-to-air missiles, killing all 176 people on board. relationship with the West.
