Soleimani: Stampede claims more than 50

A stampede at the funeral for slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in his hometown of Kerman claimed more than 50 lives on Tuesday.
“The number of those killed in this accident has topped 50.
“Most of them are men,” the chief of the regional forensics office was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.
The number of those injured has not been revised but earlier reports on Tuesday indicated a steady rise in the death toll.
The head of Iran’s medical emergency services said earlier in the day that 40 people died and 213 were hurt in the stampede that happened as thousands packed the streets ahead of the Quds force commander’s burial.
The burial was postponed due to the stampede.
The Young Journalists Club, which is affiliated to state television, said on its website that a stampede had broken out and 35 people were killed and 48 wounded.
Soleimani’s body had been taken to Iraqi and other Iranian cities before arriving in his hometown Kerman for burial, prompting mass outpourings of grief nationwide as the coffin was carried through streets.
In other developments on Tuesday, a senior Iranian official said that Tehran was considering 13 scenarios to avenge his killing.
In Washington, the U.S. defence secretary denied reports the U.S. military was preparing to withdraw from Iraq, where Tehran has vied with Washington for influence over nearly two decades of war and unrest.
Soleimani was responsible for building up Tehran’s network of proxy armies across the Middle East and he was a key figure in orchestrating Iran’s long-standing campaign to drive U.S. forces out of its neighbour Iraq.
U.S. and Iranian warnings of new strikes and retaliation have also stoked concerns about a broader Middle East conflict and led to calls in the U.S. Congress for legislation to stop U.S. President Donald Trump going to war with Iran.
“We will take revenge, hard and definitive revenge,” the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Hossein Salami, told the crowds of mourners in Kerman prior to the stampede.
Trump has promised strikes on 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites, if Iran retaliates, although U.S. officials sought to downplay his reference to cultural targets.
However, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said there had been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq.
“I don’t know what that letter is,” he said.
U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the letter was a “poorly worded” draft document meant only to underscore increased movement by U.S. forces.
About 5,000 U.S. troops are still in Iraq, where there has been a U.S. military presence since Saddam Hussein was toppled in a 2003 invasion.
On Sunday, Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution calling for all foreign troops to leave the country.
Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Abdel Abdul Mahdi told the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad on Monday that both sides needed to work together to implement the resolution.
Friction between Iran and the U.S. has risen since Washington withdrew in 2018 from a nuclear deal between Tehran and other world powers.
The U.S. has imposed economic sanctions on Iran and Tehran said on Sunday it was dropping all limitations on uranium enrichment, its latest step back from commitments under the deal.
The U.S. administration denied a visa to allow Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to attend a UN Security Council meeting in New York on Thursday, a U.S. official said.
U.S. general Milley said the threat from Soleimani was imminent.
“We would have been culpably negligent to the American people had we not made the decision we made,” he said.
Trump administration officials will provide a classified briefing for U.S. senators on Wednesday on events in Iraq after some lawmakers accused the White House of risking a broad conflict without a strategy.