Huge crowds thronged the streets of Najaf and packed the courtyards of its majestic shrine as they mourned on Wednesday late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei during his funeral procession in Iraq.
Iran began six days of public funeral ceremonies for Khamenei on Saturday, including a dedicated day in neighboring Iraq -- a Shia powerhouse with close ties to Tehran and home to the faith’s most sacred shrines.
The Islamic republic hopes the marathon ceremonies will show strength and unity after the Middle East war, which started with US-Israeli strikes that killed Khamenei and several relatives on February 28.
Mohammed al-Bayati, 30, said he would have never missed the funeral “of the person who challenged the power of America and Israel.”
Murtada al-Maliki, 27, who travelled overnight from southern Iraq to attend the funeral in Najaf, said Khamenei “stood with us against Daesh,” another name for the Islamic State group, “and kept Israel in check.”
The procession in Iraq came as the United States and Iran renewed hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz.
The US military said it had struck dozens of Iranian targets in response to Tehran’s attacks on three ships in Hormuz, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards later saying they had hit US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait.
After a massive procession in Iran’s holy city of Qom, Khamenei’s body was brought Tuesday night to Iraq where authorities declared Wednesday a public holiday.
Since early morning, despite the scorching heat, vast crowds filled the streets of Najaf, with some people pushing close hoping to touch Khamenei’s coffin as it rode slowly in the back of a truck en route to the shrine of Imam Ali -- the Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law and the first Shia Imam.
There, the call for prayer echoed in the vast courtyards as hundreds of clerics in white and black turbans waited for hours to pray over Khamenei’s remains.
Inside the shrine, thousands jostled to get closer to the coffin as it was carried away in the mausoleum’s halls -- its last stop in Najaf before being flown to the other holy city of Karbala.
Khamenei’s funeral will conclude with his burial on Thursday in his hometown of Mashhad in northeast Iran.
The remains of Khamenei’s relatives who were killed with him, including his granddaughter, were quietly brought early Wednesday to the shrines of Najaf and Karbala.
Najaf is the main center of Shia religious seminaries, and is also home to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s top Shia religious authority.
Many senior Shia clerics have studied, taught or lived there, including Khamenei’s predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
After Najaf, another procession will take place in Karbala, about 60 kilometers north, ending at the shrines of Imam Hussein and his brother Abbas.
The death of Hussein, the third Shia Imam, in the seventh century remains central to Shia history and draws millions of people from around the world to Karbala and Najaf every year.
The bond between Iraq and neighboring Iran, both Shia-majority countries, runs deep and is shaped by both religion and politics. But ties were not always strong.
In the 1980s, Iraq’s late ruler Saddam Hussein, who repressed the Shia population, went to war with the Islamic Republic.
But the two countries have become close allies since Saddam’s fall in 2003 in a US-led invasion and with the rise to power of Shia-dominated governments in Baghdad.
Today, Iran backs influential politicians but also armed groups, some of which joined the Middle East war after Khamenei’s death in support of Iran, attacking US facilities in Iraq.
Iraq has another strong ally: the US.
For decades, its successive governments have struggled to maintain a delicate balance between the two foes.
Today, the challenge is growing as the US steps up pressure on Iraq to curb Iran’s influence and disarm Tehran-backed groups.
For mourner Haidar Jaafar, speaking before the funeral, even though he doesn’t support Iranian policies in Iraq, he “stands with Iran against the Israeli enemy.”
“Even those who do not align with Iran” would attend, he said, because Khamenei was killed “by Israeli-American hands.”