TRANSCRIPT
These are the sounds of a procession in Iran's south-eastern city of Kerman, and this is the moment - captured on state television - where everything changed.
Two bombs were exploded at the event, one after the other, killing at least 95 people and wounding 211.
It appears to be the deadliest militant attack to target Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
One of the injured says it all happened so quickly.
“I suddenly felt a burn on my back, then when I tried to move, I couldn't. I just remember hearing the sound of an explosion.”
An unnamed official told state media that the two explosive devices were planted along the road and were detonated remotely.
Iran's Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told state broadcaster IRNA that the second explosion came as people were still in shock from the first blast.
“At 3 PM, the first explosion happened, and when people gathered to help those who were hurt, the second explosion happened.”
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombings.
The deadly attack was at an event honouring an Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq in a United States drone strike in 2020.
The general was the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force and was revered by much of Iranian society as a leader of and now a martyr for his country.
His assassination and the subsequent retaliation when Iran fired missiles at two Iraqi air bases housing US forces brought Iran and the U-S closer than ever to war.
And now, on the fourth anniversary of that strike and the following threat of global war, this deadly new attack threatens to ignite simmering tensions throughout the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.
While Iranian officials initially blamed unspecified "terrorists", Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi levelled the blame at Israel despite a lack of immediate evidence.
“I warn the Zionist regime, don't doubt it, you will pay the price for this crime. These crimes that you have committed (you) will deeply regret. And you will see by the power of God that the one who has failed in this field and will leave this field more disgraced than today is the Zionist regime and the criminal America.”
Tensions between Iran and Israel, along with the US, have reached a new high over Israel's war on Iranian-backed Hamas militants in Gaza in retaliation for their October 7 attack on southern Israel.
However, the National Security Council spokesman for the United States government John Kirby has rejected any suggestion that it or its ally Israel was involved in the attack.
“We have no indication at this time at all that Israel was involved in any way whatsoever. We aren't at a point now where we have a lot of great detail on on this bombing. Certainly our our hearts go out to all the innocent victims and their family members who are obviously, their lives are going to be forever changed by this. But we don't have any we don't have any more detail in terms of how it happened or who might be responsible for it.”
One likely suspect behind the attack is IS who Iran's military has fought in Syria and Iraq in the past and who have committed attacks on Iranian civilians in recent years.
In June 2017, two simultaneous IS attacks on the Iranian parliament and a cultural site killed 17 people, in September 2018 a military parade was attacked killing 25, and in October of 2022 IS militants attacked a mosque in the Iranian city of Shiraz, killing at least 13 people.
And now, regardless of the perpetrator, residents in the city of Kerman treat their wounded and are grieving the mass killing of innocents as Iran's government declares Thursday the 4th as a national day of mourning.
