MASHHAD - Iran's late President Ebrahim Raisi was laid to rest in his hometown of Mashhad, which hosts the holy shrine of the eighth Shia imam, Imam Reza.
The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that the body of Raisi arrived in Mashhad on Thursday morning, with huge crowds of people gathering for his funeral procession that reached Imam Reza’s holy shrine, where the late president was laid to rest.
According to Mohammad-Reza Ghalandar, the mayor of Mashhad, an estimated three million people have taken part in the mourning ceremony, including those from other Iranian cities as well as the neighbouring countries of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkiye.
Raisi, his foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and several more officials lost their lives on Sunday when their helicopter crashed in Iran’s northwestern province of East Azarbaijan.
They were en route to the provincial capital Tabriz from the border with Azerbaijan, where Raisi had inaugurated a joint dam with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev.
Funeral processions were also held for the martyrs on Tuesday and Wednesday in the cities of Tabriz and Qom and the capital Tehran.
Dozens of top officials from other countries attended a memorial ceremony in Tehran on Wednesday afternoon as well.
Raisi, 63, was the eighth president of Iran and was elected in August 2021. Before that, he was in charge of Iran’s judiciary, a member of the Expediency Council, the vice chairman of the Assembly of Experts, and the custodian of Astan Quds Razavi.
Meanwhile, in the city of Rey in southern Tehran on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was laid to rest at the shrine of Abdul-Azim al-Hassani. - BERNAMA-IRNA