A stampede erupted on Tuesday at a funeral procession for a top Iranian general killed in a US airstrike last week, killing at least 50 people and injuring 48 others.
According to the report, the stampede took place in Kerman, the hometown of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, as the procession got underway.
Some 212 people were injured, semi-official news agency ISNA said, citing officials in the southeastern city. Anxious Iranians gathered outside a city hospital to check the lists of victims or show doctors pictures of their missing relatives.
Inside, patient Ali Salaji, 28, recounted the crush as his mother tended to him.
"I could hardly breathe. I had a seizure, and my foot was crushed pretty bad under the weight of all that crowd," he told AFP.
Initial videos posted online showed people lying lifeless on a road, others shouting and trying to give help them.
Soleimani's death has sparked calls across Iran for revenge against America for a slaying that’s drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.
Early Tuesday, the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened to “set ablaze” places supported by the United States over the killing of a top Iranian general in a US airstrike last week, sparking cries from the crowd of supporters of “Death to Israel!”
Hossein Salami made the pledge before a crowd of thousands gathered in a central square in Kerman before a casket carrying Soleimani's remains.
The US blames Soleimani for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday in a drone strike near Baghdad’s airport.
Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing regime leader Bashar Assad in a long war, and he also served as the point man for Iranian proxies in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.
His slaying already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow ISIS militants to mount a comeback.
According to a report on Tuesday by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, Iran has worked up 13 sets of plans for revenge for Soleimani's killing. The report quoted Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, as saying that even the weakest among them would be a “historic nightmare” for the US. He declined to give any details.
Iran's parliament, meanwhile, passed an urgent bill declaring the US military's command at the Pentagon and those acting on its behalf in Soleimani's killing as “terrorists," subject to Iranian sanctions.
The measure appears to be an attempt to mirror a decision by President Donald Trump in April to declare the Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist organization.”
The US Defense Department used the Guard’s designation as a terror organization in the US to support the strike that killed Soleimani.
