Iran’s late President to be buried in his home city, Mashhad

Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash at the weekend, is to be buried in his home city of Mashhad on Thursday.

Raisi is to be laid to rest at the city’s shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth imam of Shia Islam.

High-ranking representatives of friendly states are expected to attend, including Russian parliamentary leader Vyacheslav Volodin.

Iran’s state railway company has organised special trains to take mourners from Tehran to the north-eastern city.

Raisi and his foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian died in a helicopter crash with seven other occupants.

They went down in dense clouds in the mountains while travelling back from a meeting with Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan.

Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had ordered five days of national mourning, and a nationwide holiday was held on Wednesday.

Millions of mourners flocked to a funeral procession in Tehran on Wednesday.

There have been several ceremonies and public displays of mourning for the late President Raisi, late foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other victims of Sunday’s crash.