“We ask citizens to go peacefully to Azadi Square,” General Hassan Hassanzadeh said.

After lying in state for two days at the Grand Mosque, a vast religious complex in Tehran, Khamenei’s coffin will be paraded through the streets of the Iranian capital, with authorities expecting millions of people to come out to see it.

The procession is expected to last 10 to 12 hours and will pass along the iconic Engelab Street and Azadi Square. Authorities have not clarified whether the crowd accompanying the coffin will be able to get close to it.

According to media reports, hundreds of people, many of them dressed in black, have flooded the streets of Tehran. Some are carrying Iranian flags or portraits of Khamenei. One is holding a banner reading “Down with the USA,” while another has a photo of US President Donald Trump with a target drawn over it.

On June 6, 1989, an ecstatic crowd stormed the funeral procession of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, tearing off his shroud and throwing his body to the ground.

Khomeini’s body was eventually transported by helicopter for burial in a cemetery near Tehran, several hours after the funeral.

According to foreign media, about 10 million people took to the streets to see the coffin, while more than ten were killed and over 10,000 were injured in the chaos.

Ceremony

Funeral services for Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on February 28, officially began on Saturday. For two days, crowds of Iranians have streamed into the Grand Mosque to see the coffin of the country’s late leader, draped in the colors of the Iranian flag.

Men and women, most dressed in black and sometimes accompanied by children, paid their final respects despite the heat and often with tears in their eyes to the man who led Iran for more than three decades until his death at the age of 86. Some carried placards with slogans against Israel and the US, while one read, “Tell the world that revenge is inevitable.”

Beside Khamenei’s coffin were those of relatives who were killed in the same attack: a daughter, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law and a 14-month-old granddaughter.

Iranian state television showed footage of Ali Khamenei’s three sons, Mustafa, Meisham and Massoud Khamenei, praying beside the coffins, along with many senior Iranian officials, but not Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father.

Mojtaba, 56, was wounded in the strikes that killed his father and has not appeared in public since taking office at the end of March. Authorities estimate that 15 to 20 million people are expected to take part.

After Tehran, Khamenei’s body will be taken to Qom and then on Wednesday to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, where the majority of the population is Shiite. He will be buried on July 9 in the holy city and birthplace of Mashhad.

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