Iranian Cleric Urges Stern Reaction to Mina Tragedy
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A top Iranian cleric called on the country’s officials to adopt a decisive and serious approach to the Saudi authorities’ mishandling of the Hajj pilgrimage that led to the killing of hundreds of pilgrims in a crush of people in Mina, near Mecca, in late September.
Delivering a speech to worshippers in Tehran on Friday, Ayatollah Kazem Seddiqi said Iranian officials should refrain from showing consideration in dealing with the Saudi regime’s mismanagement of Hajj pilgrimage and instead push for the formation of a fact-finding committee to ascertain the cause of the Mina incident.
His comments come against a backdrop of international criticism of Saudi Arabia after a September 24 crush of people in Mina killed around 4,700 people, including 465 Iranians.
The cleric also criticized the muted reaction of the United Nations, its Security Council and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to the tragic incident.
Those organizations are not expected to take action anyway because they support the child-murderer regime of Al Saud, Ayatollah Seddiqi stated.
He further took a swipe at the Riyadh regime for its links with the US and the Zionists and launching a “proxy war” against the oppressed people of Yemen.
Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by a Saudi-led coalition for months.
On March 26, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies began to launch deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
More than 4,000 Yemenis, many of them children and women, have been killed in the aggression against the Arab country so far.
