The company running Tehran’s subway network says nearly three million people commuted to the central neighborhoods of the city to attend the mass funeral held for late Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani on Monday.
Tehran Urban and Suburban Railway Company (TUSRC), generally known as the Tehran Metro, said in a statement on Tuesday that a total of 2.95 million people had taken train services in seven lines to reach stations on Enqelab and Azadi streets, the two main roads stretching from west to east of Tehran where the funeral was held a day earlier.
The figure, recorded on a holiday when most of government offices and shops located in downtown Tehran are closed, is is an all-time high for the TUSRC.
Various reports as well as government figures suggested that more than seven million people had attended the funeral of Soleimani, the former commander of Iran’s Quds force who was assassinated along Iranian and Iraqi companions in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Friday.
The Fars news agency provided a calculation based on satellite pictures that said more than 8.5 million people had turned up for the ceremony, the likes of which has never been seen in Iran at least in the past three decades.
The 11-kilometer path hosting the procession was so packed in some places that it led to incidents for the mourners, said the report by Fars.
It said that more than 500 people had been referred to clinics and hospitals for slight injuries while a total of 63 people had to be hospitalized for relatively serious conditions.
A similar mass march held in Soleimani’s hometown of Kerman on Tuesday also drew more than a million people.
Reports said the huge crowd that turned out in Kerman, a city of nearly 600,000 people located in southeast Iran, caused multiple deaths during an stampede that broke out just before the burial.