People disperse near the site where two explosions in quick succession struck a crowd marking the anniversary of the 2020 killing of Guards general Qasem Soleimani, near the Saheb al-Zaman Mosque in the southern Iranian city of Kerman on Jan. 3, 2024. (Credit: Mehr News/AFP)
WASHINGTON — The United States was not involved in any way in the explosions in Iran on Wednesday and has no reason to believe Israel was, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a regular news briefing.
Two explosions killed more than 100 people and wounded scores at a ceremony in Iran earlier on Wednesday, Iranian officials said, blaming unspecified "terrorists." Mourners had gathered near the Saheb al-Zaman Mosque in the southern Iranian city of Kerman to commemorate Revolutionary Guards General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed exactly four years ago by a US drone strike close to Baghdad International Airport.
"The United States was not involved in any way, and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said of Wednesday's violence.
"We have no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion," he said.
"We do express our sympathies to the victims and their loved ones who died in this horrific explosion," he said.
The blast on the anniversary of Soleimani's assassination comes one day after a suspected Israeli attack killed the deputy political leader of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, in the southern suburbs of Beirut that are a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.
Miller warned against further escalation in the region. "It is in no one's interest — not in the interest of any country in the region, not in the interest of any country in the world — to see this conflict escalated any further than it already is," he said.
Miller declined to assess who carried out the attack in Iran.
Soleimani, who headed an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards, was also a staunch enemy of the Islamic State group, a Sunni extremist movement which has carried out attacks in majority-Shiite Iran.
Soleimani was killed four years ago at the Baghdad airport in a strike ordered by then president Donald Trump following attacks on US forces in the country by Shiite militias linked to Iran.
Iran backs Hamas, the militant movement which runs the Gaza Strip. Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,140 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
In response to the deadliest attack in its history, Israel launched a relentless offensive that has reduced vast swathes of Gaza to rubble and claimed over 22,300 lives, according Gaza's health ministry.
WASHINGTON — The United States was not involved in any way in the explosions in Iran on Wednesday and has no reason to believe Israel was, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a regular news briefing.Two explosions killed more than 100 people and wounded scores at a ceremony in Iran earlier on Wednesday, Iranian officials said, blaming unspecified...