TEHRAN, Oct 13: Iran and Iraq will both stage funerals for Revolutionary Guard General Abbas Nilforoushan, killed in an Israeli air strike alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, the Guards' news agency said Sunday.
Nilforoushan, a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force foreign operations arm, was killed on September 27 alongside Nasrallah in the strike on south Beirut.
The IRGC said Friday his body had been recovered from the site of the strike on the Lebanese capital's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Funeral ceremonies will be held in "Najaf and Karbala" in Iraq on Monday before the body is transferred to Iran's holy city of Mashhad, the Sepah news agency said.
Another ceremony will take place at Tehran's Imam Hossein Square on Tuesday before burial Thursday in the central city of Isfahan, his hometown, Sepah said.
On October 1, Iran fired some 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Nasrallah, Nilforoushan and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in late July.
Israel said it carried out the Beirut strike but did not comment on Haniyeh's death in Tehran, where he had attended the inauguration of the Islamic republic's new president.
Israel has vowed to retaliate for the Iranian missile attack, with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant saying the response would be "deadly, precise, and surprising". —AFP
