ISIS takes credit for Iran suicide bombing attacks that killed 84, injured hundreds

ISIS has taken credit for the suicide bombing attacks in Iran Wednesday that killed at least 84 people at a ceremony honoring Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani on the fourth anniversary of his death.

The Islamic State group issued a Telegram statement Thursday taking credit for the Kerman bombings, which marked the nation’s worst terror attack in decades as unrest spreads across the Middle East.

Experts who confirmed the statement believe the extremists were trying to take advantage of regional instability.

They speculated ISIS may be trying to expand Israel’s war on the Iranian-backed Gaza rulers Hamas by targeting the ceremony honoring Soleimani, who was killed by a US airstrike in 2020.

Wednesday’s attack also injured some 284 people who were paying their respects to the military leader, who had directed a network of militias who targeted American troops during the lengthy US occupation of Iraq.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed a “harsh response” to the attacks, which left chunks of asphalt missing from the blood-stained road where one bomb went off, suggesting the explosive had been packed with shrapnel to cause even greater damage.

“I didn’t get what happened exactly, this happened very suddenly,” Mohammad Mehdi Ghalekhani, a volunteer with the Revolutionary Guards’ Basij force who was injured in the “horrific” attack.

“When this happened many people died, and most people where injured. Those who died didn’t have any intact body parts — no whole hands or faces.”

Suicide attackers Omar al-Mowahed and Seif-Allah al-Mujahed wore explosive vests to carry out the brutality, according to ISIS.

Attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea by Iranian-backed Houthis rebels and suspected Israeli air strikes against enemy targets in Lebanon and Syria in recent days had added to regional unease and empowered ISIS to unleash its brutal attack, experts suggested.

“This falls under the modus operandi of ISIS, especially since it was such a mass casualty attack,” Aaron Y. Zelin, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said.

“They are kind of like [comic book character] The Joker. They want to see the world burn. They don’t care how it happens as long as it benefits them.”

Iran had indirectly blamed Israel for the attack, and did not immediately acknowledge that ISIS was at fault.

In Kerman Thursday, residents stepped on signs bearing the Israeli flag and the slogan “Death to Israel.”

Iranian state media said the blasts happened about a mile and a little over a mile-and-a-half from Soleimani’s crypt, outside a security perimeter.

“The moment I turned around to tell my husband’s sister, ‘Let’s go to the square,’ the bomb exploded,” 38-year-old Mahdieh Sazmand said from her Kerman hospital bed.

“If we were just 10 steps further we would have been right over the bomb.”

With Post wires