Leader: Address causes of Hillah terrorist attack, Semnan train crash

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei expressed deep grief over the recent tragic incidents in Iran and neighboring Iraq that led to the deaths of scores of Iranian nationals, urging the country's officials to find a basic solution to such happenings.

In a message released on Saturday, he denounced Thursday’s cowardly terrorist attack near Hillah in Iraq that led to the martyrdom of over a hundred pilgrims, including 40 Iranian Muslims, returning from the Arba’een ceremonies at the holy shrine of Imam Husain (AS) in Karbala. He also expressed deep grief over Friday’s deadly collision of trains between Semnan and Damghan because of human error that left 45 people dead.

The Leader castigated the “heinous and cowardly” attempt by Takfiri terrorist groups to vent their frustration after failing to disrupt the grand Arba’een march and pilgrimage, on unsuspecting pilgrims returning home. He said this act of terrorism once again showed the evil face of the Takfiris.

As for the train collision, Ayatollah Khamenei deplored the negligence, inefficiency, dereliction of duty, and imprudence of railway staff in charge of the stations and junctions at the place of the colliding of the two trains that led to a tragedy that could have been averted.

The Leader extended heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families of the victims of the two “painful incidents” and urged officials to make efforts to alleviate their suffering and address the root causes of the tragedies.

At around 8 a.m. local time on Friday, a regular passenger train from Tehran bound for the holy city of Mashhad in Khorasan, had halted at a station between the cities of Semnan and Damghan, when another train, which had been erroneously given a green signal to proceed on the same track, hit it from behind, setting a number of wagons ablaze.

SS/AS