Khamenei laid to rest amid anti-US chants

TEHRAN:

Iran on Thursday buried its slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a shrine in Mashhad, the culmination of a week of mass funeral processions and rallies.

Khamenei was killed in a US airstrike on the first day of the war on February 28, as part of a US-Israeli barrage against the nation that set off a months-long conflict that has killed thousands and throttled worldwide energy supplies.

His funeral procession reached the country's holiest shrine for his burial on Thursday with a huge crowd packing the courtyard, some bearing banners reading "We Will Kill Trump".

As a week of funeral events reached its culmination, Khamenei's son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei is still hidden from public view after being disfigured in the February 28 strike that killed his father, a sign of the unease still gripping Iran.

Khamenei's body was carried by truck slowly through the crammed streets of Mashhad in northeastern Iran towards the gilt dome and minarets of the Shrine of Imam Reza, flanked by white-turbaned clerics. Black-clad mourners pressed in close behind, waving Iranian flags, photographs of the late Khamenei and red placards with revolutionary slogans.

A helicopter lifted his coffin the final short stretch with the truck unable to pass through the thick crowds. It then lay on a carpet as clerics stood praying behind.

Iranian authorities are presenting Khamenei's burial and the huge crowds attending his funeral as evidence of the popularity of their theocratic state and its lasting ideological fire, nearly half a century after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

But beneath the surface, Iran faces huge internal challenges and the legacy of Khamenei's 37-year rule is bitterly disputed in a country where large numbers have repeatedly risen up to protest poverty and repression in recent years.

The whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei, proclaimed supreme leader by a clerical assembly in early March, a week after his father's death, has remained a mystery to Iranians.

He has not appeared in public since the war began with the strike that killed Ali Khamenei. While he has issued written statements, no image, video or voice recording of him has been issued.

He suffered debilitating injuries in that same strike, his face disfigured and limbs badly wounded.

Senior sources in Tehran have said he is recovering but that he has not yet been well enough to manage public appearances. State security services are also trying to limit his exposure in case of more US attacks.

As crowds jostled in Mashhad awaiting Khamenei's funeral cortege, the crowd chanted slogans demanding revenge on U.S. President Donald Trump for his killing.

"I swear by the blood of the supreme leader, Trump, we will kill you!" they shouted, with women holding up placards reading "Kill Trump".

The shrine's courtyard was a sea of mourners as dusk fell, their defiant chants of "Death to America" ringing out above the lyrical funeral laments and sorrowful string music broadcast by loudspeakers.

Senior ayatollahs sat waiting on a raised dais, under the intricate blue tiling of an arched recess.

As the crowds awaited the coffins of Khamenei and his family in the sweltering July heat, hoses pumped water high into the air to spray across the mourners and keep them cool.

Khamenei's remains, along with those of four family members killed alongside him, have already been paraded through Tehran, Qom and Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala.