Iran holds funerals for victims of terror attack in Ahvaz

Iran has held the funerals for the victims of the weekend terror attack on a military parade in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, the deadliest attack in the country in nearly a decade.

Thousands of mourners gathered at the city’s Sarallah Mosque on the Taleghani junction, carrying caskets in the sweltering heat.

Others, mainly young people wearing ethnic clothes of the region’s Arab minority, held large photographs of those slain at Saturday’s parade in Ahvaz, the Khuzestan provincial capital, where militants disguised as soldiers had opened fire at marching troops and onlookers. Of the 25 people killed, 12 were from Ahvaz and the rest from elsewhere in Khuzestan.

The procession walked down the Naderi and Zand Streets, many weeping and beating their chests, a traditional way of showing grief. Mourners played drums, cymbals and horns, according to local Arabic custom.

Cries and wails erupted when the casket of a local Ahvaz hero, 54-year-old Hossein Monjazi, a disabled war veteran and Revolutionary Guard member who had lost a leg and a hand in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, was brought out.

Monjazi was in the wheelchair watching the parade when the gunshots erupted and was unable to find shelter from the hail of bullets.