The bodies of Raisi and two of his companions arrived at Shahid Kaveh International Airport in Birjand, South Khorasan Province, on Thursday morning with the welcome of members of the government delegation and the country’s military men and functionaries.

After Tabriz, Qom, and Tehran, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Birjand to pay tribute to the Iranian leader in the last stop of the funeral ceremonies before his burial at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad.

According to local reports, this coincided with the start of tributes to Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian at the Foreign Ministry building in Tehran and Tabriz’s Friday Prayer Imam Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem.

Millions of Iranians and some 68 representatives from 50 countries attended the funeral procession in Tehran to express their condolences and solidarity with the Islamic Republic.

The Emir of Qatar, the national leader of Turkmenistan, the presidents of Tunisia and Tajikistan, and the prime ministers of Iraq, Pakistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Syria, among other senior dignitaries, attended the funeral ceremony in the capital. Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and their companions were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday after attending the opening ceremony of the Qiz Qalasi joint dam on the Aras River, bordering Azerbaijan, in the presence of President Ilham Aliyev.

The helicopter in which they were traveling crash-landed. Search efforts faced several obstacles, including fog, heavy rains, and temperatures minus 15 degrees Celsius.

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