The first of several funeral ceremonies began in Iran on Tuesday for President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other victims of Sunday's helicopter crash near the Azerbaijan border.
It comes after Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared five days of mourning for the late president.
State TV broadcast live images of mourners, many of them dressed in black, gathering in the city of Tabriz on Tuesday.
Raisi's body was later flown from Tabriz, the closest major city to the remote crash site, to Tehran airport before heading to the holy Shiite Muslim city of Qom.
From there, it will return to the capital to lie at Tehran's Grand Mosalla Mosque before being transferred to his hometown of Mashahd, in eastern Iran, for burial on Thursday.
Even though state media reported that a large crowd of mourners appeared in Tabriz, some see a stark contrast in public grief compared with past commemorations for the deaths of other senior figures in the regime.
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