TEHRAN: Thousands of Iranians gathered at a huge outdoor prayer complex in Tehran on Saturday to view the coffins of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family, who were killed at the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran.Mourners dressed in black and draped in the red, white and green flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran carried photographs of Khamenei and his son and successor Mojtaba.In a display of public devotion to the Islamic republic’s religious statehood and revolutionary fervor, Iran is holding a weeklong mass funeral procession for the supreme leader killed in air strikes early in the war in February.After a day of lying inside the state for visits by senior Iranian leaders and foreign officials, Khamenei’s coffin was displayed under glass outside along with his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter. There has still been no public information or images released about the new leader Mojtaba, who is said to have been injured in the attack that killed his father.In the vast courtyard of the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque, mourners gathered, beating their chests, crying and waving banners of the Islamic Republic. Women wearing black chadors wore white caps or held umbrellas to protect themselves from the bright morning sun.“Let’s wail!” A conductor encouraged the crowd through a loudspeaker. Chants of “Death to America” echoed through the huge prayer room.“Everyone here has come to avenge the blood of their supreme leader,” Arash Rahimi, 40, told Reuters in the crowd. “As our leader has said, we have a bloody feud with the United States. Our relations with America will never be good.”The funeral comes at a critical moment for Iran, where its clerical rulers, backed by the military, are desperate to avoid attack while keeping their system of governance intact.In Iran’s democratic system, Khamenei was not only head of state and leader of the revolutionary movement, but also the earthly representative of the last Imam of Shia Islam, a holy man who disappeared in the ninth century.His death in an enemy attack joins a long tradition of martyrdom and ritual mourning, dating back to the death in battle of Hussein, the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, in the seventh century. (This is a Reuters story)