Iran begins burying late president and others killed in helicopter crash

Hundreds of thousands of people crowded into Mashhad (Mohammad Hasan Salavati, Shahraranews via AP)

Iran was preparing to inter its late president at the holiest site for Shiite Muslims in the Islamic Republic, in a final sign of respect for a protege of the country’s supreme leader killed in a helicopter crash earlier this week.

President Ebrahim Raisi’s burial at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad caps days of processions across much of Iran, seeking to bolster the country’s theocracy after the crash that killed him, the country’s foreign minister and six others.