TEHRAN: Millions of people packing massive Jamkaran Mosque and all streets leading to it in the holy city of Qom on Tuesday offered funeral prayers for the slain leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and members of his family.

Ayatollah Khamenei was assassinated in a joint US-Israel strike on Feb 28.

Aerial footage broadcast by state television showed the streets of Qom packed with mourners.

The prayer service was led inside the mosque by 93-year-old Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli.

Other footage showed mourners, including religious scholars wearing turbans, paying their respects at the coffins including Khamenei’s 14-month-old granddaughter.

A procession then followed with a truck carrying the bodies to the mausoleum of Hazrat Fatima Masumeh, the sister of Imam Ali Reza, the eighth Shia imam and descendant of Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

The previous day, a lengthy funeral procession in Tehran also drew millions of people.

Iranians flooded the streets of the capital in an event comparable to the 1989 funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic.

Hundreds of thousands of mourning had begun arriving in the holy city of Qom from across the country since the previous afternoon, filling the courtyards and prayer halls of the holy Jamkaran Mosque before dawn.

Thousands of processions of mourners, traveling on foot and by vehicles while carrying red banners alongside the Iranian national flag, continued to converge on the prayers site.

Another funeral procession is scheduled to be held on Wednesday in holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2026