Hundreds of thousands gathered in Tehran for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's funeral on Monday as Hamas announced it would dissolve Gaza's governing body and back a technocratic administration.
In what is the biggest day yet in a week of massive memorial ceremonies demonstrating the grip of surviving clerical leaders, drone footage on state television showed many tens of thousands of people crammed into a boulevard in central Tehran.
The caskets of the slain leader and four of his family members were driven in a large truck through the streets, while fire hoses sprayed water from above to keep the marchers cool.
The mourning ceremonies began on Friday when the caskets of the elder Khamenei, one of his daughters and her 14-month-old child, one of his sons-in-law and the wife of Mojtaba, the son who succeeded him as Iran's supreme leader, lay in state for Iranian officials and foreign dignitaries.
Further large-scale ceremonies were held outdoors on Saturday and Sunday before Monday's huge funeral procession. Later this week, authorities say the body will be taken for further processions in Iran's shia seminary city of Qom and two Shia shrine cities in neighbouring Iraq, before returning to Iran for burial within a medieval shrine complex in Mashhad.
Separately, the Hamas group said Monday it had dissolved its government in Gaza and is preparing to transfer power to a technical committee backed by the United Nations as part of a US-brokered ceasefire deal.
Hamas did not say whether it planned to take the crucial step of disarming or handing over security to an international force, but described its decision as evidence of its commitment to Gaza’s reconstruction after years of war.