Huge crowds joined funeral processions for Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad and Tehran on Saturday as calls to avenge the Iranian general’s death mounted and the US case for ordering his assassination was increasingly called into question.

After Suleimani, Iran will hit back hard – possibly on multiple fronts Read more

As the coffins of Suleimani and his close associate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were carried through the Iraqi capital, the ramifications of the killings were reverberating across a nervous region, where many believe the aftermath could spark a new era of bloodletting and instability. Two rockets crashed into Baghdad’s Green Zone on Saturday night, near the sprawling US embassy compound, which was attacked by Shia militia members in the days before Suleimani’s death.

Donald Trump’s decision to authorise the assassination also appeared to have driven a wedge between Washington and its allies, with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, telephoning Iraq’s acting prime minister to express support for the country’s sovereignty in an implicit rebuke of the strike, which was carried out without the knowledge of Iraqi leaders.

Profile Who was Qassem Suleimani? Show Hide Qassem Suleimani, killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad, had become well known among Iranians and was sometimes discussed as a future president. Many considered Suleimani to have been the second most powerful person in Iran, behind supreme leader of Iran Ali Khamenei, but arguably ahead of President Hassan Rouhani. He was commander of the Quds Force, the elite, external wing of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the Trump administration designated as a terror organisation in April last year. He was born in Rabor, a city in eastern Iran, and forced to travel to a neighbouring city at age 13 and work to pay his father’s debts to the government of the Shah. By the time the monarch fell in 1979, Suleimani was committed to the clerical rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and joined the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary force established to prevent a coup against the newly declared Islamic Republic. Within two years, he was sent to the front to fight in the war against the invading Iraqi army. He quickly distinguished himself, especially for daring reconnaissance missions behind Iraqi lines, and the war also gave him his first contact with foreign militias of the kind he would wield to devastating effect in the decades to come. By the the time the Iraq government fell in 2003, Suleimani was the head of the Quds force and blamed for sponsoring the Shia militias who killed thousands of civilian Iraqis and coalition troops. As fighting raged on Iraq’s streets, Suleimani fought a shadow war with the US for leverage over the new Iraqi leadership. Once described by American commander David Petraeus as ‘a truly evil figure’, Suleimani was instrumental in crushing street protests in Iran in 2009. In recent months outbreaks of popular dissent in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran were again putting pressure on the crescent of influence he had spent the past two decades building. Violent crackdowns on the protests in Baghdad were blamed on militias under his influence.

Eighteen months before his death, Suleimani had issued Donald Trump a public warning, wagging his finger and dressed in olive fatigues. “You will start the war but we will end it.” Michael Safi Photograph: Mehdi Ghasemi/AFP

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also called for calm amid concerns that Suleimani’s death may shift the foundations of Washington’s relationships in the region. All three states are US allies and consider themselves to be possible arenas for Iranian retaliation.

While Trump continued to revel in his decision, tweeting on Saturday night that if Iran retaliated the US had identified 52 Iranian sites that would be targeted “very fast and very hard”, there were also fears in Europe and Britain that potential consequences for an already volatile global order had not been considered. The former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers described Suleimani’s assassination as an “act of war”.

The UK defence minister Ben Wallace said he had spoken to his US counterpart, Mark Esper, adding: “We urge all parties to engage to de-escalate the situation.” He said US forces in Iraq, who are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government, had been repeatedly attacked by Iranian-backed militia and that Suleimani had been at the heart of the use of proxies to undermine neighbouring sovereign nations and target Iran’s enemies. “Under international law the United States is entitled to defend itself against those posing an imminent threat to their citizens,” Wallace said.

The White House transmitted on Saturday evening its formal notification to Congress of Friday’s drone strike that killed Suleimani in Iraq, two senior congressional aides told Reuters.

Many Democrats have criticised Trump for failing to seek advance approval or to notify Congress of the attack.

The classified notification was sent under a US law requiring the administration to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action or imminent actions.

Trump’s administration was expected to explain the circumstances, the authority under which the action was taken and the expected scope and duration of the military involvement. The White House did not immediately comment.

Play Video 0:35 Qassem Suleimani: moment Iranian general killed by US strike reportedly caught on CCTV – video

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, said in a statement that the White House notification about the attack “prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the administration’s decision to engage in hostilities against Iran”.

She said the “highly unusual” decision to classify the entire document compounded her concerns and “suggests that the Congress and the American people are being left in the dark about our national security”.

On Saturday night, Boris Johnson had yet to respond to the strike. It is understood that Britain had no prior knowledge of it being authorised.

There were also concerns about what the killing could mean for bilateral ties between Washington and Baghdad, which have struggled to find common ground in the years since US troops withdrew from Iraq. Iraqi officials attending Suleimani’s funeral procession said they would now push for the exit of remaining US forces, who had returned to fight Islamic State – a move that would jeopardise global efforts to mop up the threat from the terror group.

As he wept over the coffin of Muhandis, the new leader of the Popular Mobilisation Units, Hadi Al-Amiri, said: “Be assured that the price for your pure blood is the exit of the American troops from Iraq to achieve full national sovereignty.” Iraq’s outgoing prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, also joined the procession.

Suleimani’s body was taken to the Kadhimiya shrine in the north of the city, followed by the Shia shrine city of Najaf. It was then flown to the city of Ahvaz in south-west Iran on Sunday, the official IRIB news agency reported. IRIB posted a video clip of a coffin wrapped in an Iranian flag being unloaded from a plane as a military band played. Thousands of mourners dressed in black marched through Ahvaz, in live footage aired on state TV.

It was expected that the body will be taken to Tehran and finally to his home town, Kerman, on Tuesday.

In Baghdad, Shia militia leaders and Iraqi dignitaries stood under the banners of groups that were loyal to Suleimani through his long and influential presence in Iraq, in which he projected Iran’s interests through a mix of hard-nosed security, intelligence and coercion. Calls for revenge resounded through the mourners, some of whom regarded Suleimani and Muhandis as historical messianic figures.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, reactions were in sharp contrast. In northern Syria, where Suleimani proved pivotal in saving Bashar al-Assad from defeat, there were celebrations. Sweets were handed out in some towns.

“This general was the devil himself,” said Sobhih Mustafa, in the town of Maarat al-Numan. “His legacy will be written in blood.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mourners in the city of Karbala, Iraq, carry the coffins of Suleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Photograph: Mohammed Sawaf/AFP via Getty Images

As the four-day burial ritual was getting under way, the US justification behind Suleimani’s killing, which centred on there being an “imminent attack” which he had directed, was challenged in some quarters.

The New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi tweeted that two sources privy to the information, held by US intelligence officials, described the case as “razor thin”. Her tweets also detail a scramble to discover Suleimani’s whereabouts once the decision to kill him was made.

Timeline The buildup to Qassem Suleimani's death Show Hide A rocket attack on an Iraqi military base near Kirkuk kills an American contractor and injures US and Iraqi soldiers. The US blames Shia militia group, Kata’ib Hizbullah (KH) The US conducts retaliatory airstrikes against five KH bases in Iraq and Syria, saying there had been 11 attacks against Iraqi bases hosting coalition forces in Iraq over the past two months Protesters storm the US embassy in Baghdad, trapping diplomats inside while chanting “Death to America” and slogans in support of pro-Iranian militias. At one point they breached the main gate and smashed their way into several reception rooms. The rampage was carried out with the apparent connivance of local Iraqi security forces who allowed protesters inside the highly protected Green Zone In a drone strike ordered by US president Donald Trump, the US kills Iranian general Qassem Suleimani while he was being transported from Baghdad airport

In May, the Guardian reported that Suleimani had instructed loyal forces in the region to “prepare for proxy war”. That order was intercepted by GCHQ and led to urgent messages being sent to Baghdad and Iran.

Meanwhile, Iran claimed that the US had sent a note to Tehran through the Swiss embassy, which acts as an intermediary between the two foes, calling for a “proportional response” to the killing of Suleimani. “The Swiss, who represent US interests [in Iran], brought a very unwise message from the Americans, which received a firm response,” the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on TV. “The Americans made a wrong move and are now worried about its consequences.”

Qassem Suleimani: tears mix with vows of vengeance at Iranian general's funeral Read more

The deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps , Brigadier General Ali Fadavi, said the US “resorted to such means as diplomacy this morning [Friday] and even told us ‘if you want to take revenge, do it in a way that’s proportional to what we did’.”

“But they cannot decide anything [for us],” Fadavi added, according to the Iranian English-language news site Iran Front Page. “That will take place at the most opportune time and in the best manner possible.

“Soon we will see that the Americans will not be there in the region,” he said.