'Night of Martyrs' Ceremonies to Be Held on Wednesday

TEHRAN - Concurrent with the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Jafar Sadeq (AS), the bodies of 225 martyrs who died as a result of the eight-year Iran-Iraq will be buried in 45 cities around the country.

According to reports, General Brigadier Mir Feisal Baqerzadeh, the commander of the Missing in Action Search Committee, announced in a press conference on Saturday that the funerals would take place on January 9. The veterans, known as "Martyrs of Righteousness Carried on the Hands of Followers of Imam Sadeq" will be interred on the anniversary of the uprising in Qom and the Hoveizeh incident.

He also said that a funeral procession would be held in Tehran for 6 anonymous martyrs. Their bodies will be taken from Kaj Square in Sa'adat Abad to Imam Sadeq (AS) University, where they will be buried.

Baqerzadeh mentioned that wherever possible efforts had been made to transport the martyrs' bodies to their respective home provinces for burial, and as such 5 of them will be entombed at the Imam Mojtaba (AS) Mosque on Kish Island.

He said a ceremony called "A Night of Martyrs", which will precede the actual funerals, will be held publicly in of each of the cities that bodies are scheduled to be buried. The citizens of all these cities have welcomed this important cultural event and have called for its support.

Baqerzadeh added that during a recent search for soldiers missing in action, three members of the Search Committee, Majid Pazouki, Alireza Shahbazi and Mohammad Zamani, had attained martyrdom after stepping on an unexploded Iraqi landmine.

He confirmed that over 48,000 bodies have already been found in different parts of the country, and estimated that another 10,000 would be recovered by the end of the search operations along the western border and the Persian Gulf coast.

The terms of a recent agreement signed between Iran and Iraq declare that the bodies of 600 Iranian martyrs who died while prisoners of war (POW) will be exchanged for those of Iraqi POWs.