News - Middle East: Millions of people in Iran’s Khorasan Razavi Province have gathered to bid farewell to President Ebrahim Raeisi and two of his companions who embraced martyrdom in a tragic helicopter crash in the country’s northwestern province of East Azarbaijan.

Weeping mourners in black attire warmly welcomed the coffins of Raeisi and his associates after they arrived at the Hashemi Nejad International Airport in the provincial capital of Mashhad on Thursday afternoon.

The mourners held portraits of the martyred president and paid tribute to him and his companions as the coffins were inching their way through the tearful-eyed crowd on a trailer.

The late Iranian chief executive will be laid to rest in the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS), the eighth Shia Imam, in the center of Mashhad.

Earlier in the day, Martyr Raeisi and his associates were warmly welcomed in Birjand, the capital city of South Khorasan Province, where he was elected as the representative of the eastern province in the Assembly of Experts elections in March.

The 88-member body with an eight-year mandate is in charge of overseeing the activities of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution and is in a position of authority to either appoint or dismiss the Leader.

On Wednesday morning, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei led prayers over the bodies of Raeisi and his companions in the capital Tehran as millions of people gathered to hold a funeral procession.

The millions-strong procession started from the University of Tehran, where Iranian citizens and senior officials had already gathered to mourn, to the iconic Azadi Square.

World leaders, presidents, ambassadors and international personalities as well as high-profile figures of the Axis of Resistance, including Ismail Haniyeh, the political bureau chief of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy secretary general of Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement, attended the ceremony.

The northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz and the holy city of Qom were on Tuesday morning and evening the scene of millions of people who had gathered to pay tribute to Raeisi.

On Sunday, the helicopter carrying Raeisi and his entourage crashed as it was on its way to Tabriz, the capital of Iran’s East Azarbaijan province, from a location on the border with the Republic of Azerbaijan where the Iranian president had opened a major dam project.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and two senior provincial officials along with crew members and a bodyguard also died in the crash.

Thousands of people on Thursday also participated in a mass funeral procession for Amir-Abdollahian, who was laid to rest at the Abdul-Azim Shrine in Shahr-e Rey, southern Tehran.

Source: Press TV