Thursday Briefing: Blasts in Iran Kill Dozens

A pair of explosions yesterday at a commemoration for Iran’s former top military general, Qassim Suleimani, killed at least 95 people and wounded another 211, according to Iranian officials. The blasts heightened tensions in the broader region a day after an explosion killed several Hamas officials in a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon.

Iranian officials told state media that a pair of bombs exploded near a cemetery in Kerman, Iran, as a procession of people was on its way to observe the anniversary of the assassination of General Suleimani, who was killed four years ago in an American drone strike. Officials said the bombs appeared to have been detonated via remote control. Given the sheer scale of the blasts, the death toll was likely to rise.

Elsewhere in the Middle East:

After the fiery landing of Japan Airlines Flight 516 on Tuesday in Tokyo, its attendants evacuated all 367 passengers with no major injuries. While a number of factors aided what some have called a miracle, the relative absence of panic onboard may have helped the most.

“Everyone started yelling in Japanese,” Anton Deibe, a 17-year-old passenger from Stockholm, told The Times. “I didn’t understand anything.” Still, he said, “there was a lot less commotion than I would have thought. The passengers were calm.”

What happened? Clues about what caused the collision are starting to emerge. In a transcript of communications between the air traffic control tower and both the JAL jet and the Coast Guard plane involved in the collision, it appeared that the commercial flight was given permission to land while the Coast Guard aircraft was told to “taxi to holding point” next to the runway.

Nine high-ranking Chinese military figures were recently removed as delegates