Funeral ceremonies begin for Iranian President Raisi

According to Iranian state media, the funeral ceremony started on Tuesday morning and drew a massive crowd. The mourners marched alongside the coffins, draped with the national Iranian flag, in the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz.

The participants shouted slogans to pledge allegiance with Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei as well as the principles of the Islamic Revolution.

The mourners in the ceremony are converging on Tabriz's Imam Khomeini Mosalla (prayer grounds).

Speaking at the ceremony in Tabriz, Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahdidi said that Iran is mourning the loss of a beloved, popular, and humble president.

The Iranian nation is also saddened by the death of a foreign minister who left active diplomacy in the critical moments of the resistance as his legacy, Vahidi added.

“We had a bad landing in this matter, but we will have a brilliant rise,” Vahidi stressed.

Another funeral procession for President Raeisi and his companions is scheduled to be held in Iran’s north-central city of Qom, which hosts the holy shrine of Hazrat Masoumeh (AS), on Tuesday evening.

The bodies will then be transferred to the capital Tehran for a funeral on Wednesday.

The helicopter carrying Raisi and his entourage crashed around afternoon on Sunday as it was on its way to Tabriz, the capital of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, from a location on the border with the Republic of Azerbaijan where the Iranian president had opened a major dam project.

Rescuers found the wreckage of the helicopter early on Monday after hours of extensive search which involved more than 70 teams.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and two senior provincial officials along with crew members and bodyguards also died as a result of the crash.