Another Blast Makes This Year’s Arbaeen Bloodier

Ehsan.Sh. FCN News Agency: Many families were still awaiting the return of their loved ones from a trip to war-torn Iraq when another explosion occurred. Again, ISIS detonated a vehicle at the parking lot of buses carrying Iranians. The bloody Arbaeen ceremony claimed more victims.

Reports indicate that a bomb was planted in a fuel truck and upon detonation, it ignited five buses parked at the fuel station.

Iranian Arbaeen pilgrims were on two of these buses and intended to return to their homeland through the Chazabeh border crossing.

However, the bomb explosion cut short their journey and in an instant, took the lives of more than one hundred people.

This incident occurred last night in the “Al-Shumlya” area of “Al-Hillah” city, south of Baghdad, and has been reported as the deadliest terrorist operation in the past month.

Information is still not precise, and authorities, nearly twenty hours after the incident, announced that they still cannot provide an exact count of the killed and wounded.

It is said that many bodies are so burned and destroyed that they are unidentifiable. However, many Iranian passports have been found among the charred remains.

According to the latest reports, the number of Iranian deaths has reached 60 people, but ISIS claimed in its news channel that the number of killed and wounded exceeds 200.

However, it is still unclear which Iranian cities the victims were from.

Reuters news agency and the Arab Sky News network also announced moments ago that the death toll from this incident has risen to over 100 people.

This is the second explosion this year that has claimed Iranian Arbaeen pilgrims in Iraq. Before the Arbaeen ceremony, eleven of our countrymen lost their lives in a bomb explosion in Samarra.

According to FCN News, the day of the incident was three days after the Arbaeen ceremony, and the victims, at the request of the Islamic Republic’s authorities, were still in Iraq.

Iranian officials in recent weeks repeatedly asked Arbaeen pilgrims not to hurry their return to the country to avoid getting trapped in heavy traffic on narrow roads.

Of course, we witnessed that weeks before this ceremony, the Islamic Republic’s authorities repeatedly assured people that their complete safety during the Arbaeen trip was guaranteed. This confidence in officials was to such an extent that we saw many Iranians bringing small children or elderly people with them.

Unfortunately, as we witnessed in the Samarra explosion, officials still do not disclose the ages of the victims in the media to clarify which segments of the population are becoming victims of such Islamic Republic propaganda programs.