The ceremony for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei concluded today in the holy city of Qom, according to the Iranian news agency Tasnim, and the procession carrying his remains is now heading to Iraq, a country home to a significant Shia community.

At an event organized as a show of strength and unity, six months after the crackdown on mass protests against the government and rising prices, millions of people paid tribute to the leader yesterday, Monday, in Tehran.

In Qom, the crowd was just as large and chanted “Death to America!”—a slogan often heard at official rallies in the Islamic Republic.

Aerial photographs broadcast by state television show the streets of this city of approximately 1.5 million residents packed with people.

The coffins of Ali Khamenei and his relatives, who were killed alongside him on February 28 during the first day of the strikes launched by Israel and the U.S. against Iran (a daughter, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and a 14-month-old granddaughter, according to authorities), are now expected to arrive in Iraq tonight.

Ceremonies will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, in the cities of Najaf and Karbala, the two holiest cities of Shia Islam.

In Najaf, the main center of religious seminaries and the place where the highest-ranking religious officials have studied and taught, the procession will head to the imposing mosque of Imam Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, the fourth caliph of Islam, and the first Shi’a imam.

Later in the day, the coffins will be taken to Karbala, in northern Iraq, to the shrines of Imam Husayn and his brother Abbas.

The death of Hussein, the third Shiite imam, in the 7th century, is commemorated every year by millions of believers during the Ashura festival.

The funeral ceremonies for Khamenei are comparable to those held in 1989 for his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.

Iraqi authorities, which have close political and religious ties with neighboring Iran, announced that they have put in place significant security measures.

General Esmail Qaani, head of the Quds Force—the external operations branch of the Revolutionary Guards—praised “the meticulous planning of this historic event” from Baghdad, which, he said, demonstrates “the deep spiritual bond that unites the two nations.”

Concluding this six-day tribute, the burial of the man who led the country’s destiny for more than three decades, until his death at the age of 86, will take place on Thursday in the holy city of Mashhad (northeastern Iran), Khamenei’s birthplace.

Source: Protothema.gr