Update: +200 casualties in explosions near Soleimani's tomb

Shafaq News/ Explosions at a cemetery in Iran have killed at least 103 people and wounded more than 141 others, state-run media has reported.

The blasts took place at a ceremony on Wednesday, honouring the fourth anniversary of when the prominent Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike in 2020.

Deputy governor of the capital Kerman, Rahman Jalali, called the attack "terrorist". He did not elaborate on who could be behind them, amid wider tensions in the Mideast over Israel's ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Iran has multiple foes who could be behind the possible assault, including exile groups, militant organisations and state actors.

Iran has supported Hamas as well as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthi rebels.

However, the semi-official Nournews said "several gas canisters exploded on the road leading to the cemetery".

And a local official was quoted by Iranian state media as saying: "It is not yet clear whether the explosions were caused by gas cylinders or a terrorist attack".

State TV showed Red Crescent rescuers attending to wounded people at the ceremony.

"Our rapid response teams are evacuating the injured... But there are waves of crowds blocking roads," Reza Fallah, head of the Kerman province Red Crescent told state TV.

Qassem Soleimani was the head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force - he died in a drone strike in Iraq in January, four years ago.

Wednesday's explosions took place near his gravesite in Kerman, about 510 miles southeast of Tehran. Authorities said some people were injured while fleeing afterwards. Soleimani was the architect of Iran's regional military activities and is hailed as a national in his country.

However, to American officials, he represented a deadly foe during the Iraq war, one who helped arm militants with penetrating roadside bombs that killed and maimed US troops.

Then-US President Donald Trump, who ordered the assassination, described Soleimani as "the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world".

Soleimani's death has drawn large processions in the past. At his funeral in 2020, a stampede broke out and at least 56 people were killed and more than 200 were injured as thousands thronged the procession.