Huge crowds, estimated at 3-4 million people, filled the streets leading to the Jamkaran mosque in the holy city of Qom, today, to participate in the funeral procession and prayer service for the late leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
According to Iranian social media postings, the mosque was already packed with mourners at 1:30 AM for a prayer service that wasn’t scheduled to begin until 7 AM.
The funeral prayer was attended by a massive crowd of mourners, scholars, seminary students, officials, senior military commanders, and other prominent figures, reported IRNA. Following the prayers, the funeral procession was set to move from Jamkaran Mosque to the shrine of Hazrat Fatemeh Masoumeh (PBUH), a holy Shia site located in Qom.
The Middle East Spectator posted the following firsthand observation from Qom on a Telegram channel at about 2:30 AM local time:
“— I can’t describe what is happening, I don’t know how to explain to people how truly insane this funeral is. It’s the awakening of an entire nation.
“Public life is completely shut down in these cities. People travel from hundreds of kilometers just to visit the martyred Leader. They sleep on the hard streets, some even without food, in 30 degree weather. People walk, sometimes 10-20 kilometers, with their children, elderly, sick, and even crippled or disabled, to visit the martyred Leader.
“There isn’t a single street within the city that doesn’t have dozens or hundreds of mourners walking to the funeral site. There is no metro station without chants of ‘Allahu Akbar’, that isn’t completely congested.
“Some of the people that are attending, didn’t even support the Islamic Republic before the war. Some of them never attended a political rally in their entire lives. What is happening is completely unprecedented in history.”
The funeral procession now moves on to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, where a similar outpouring is expected.
