Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also arrived in Najaf to participate in the ceremonies. The official reception at the airport was attended by Iraqi political leaders and Shi'ite religious figures, before the coffin is carried through the city in public mourning events expected to draw large crowds on Wednesday.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-901813
Iraqi authorities declared Wednesday a public holiday, with ceremonies set to begin at 6:00 am (0300 GMT) in Najaf.
Huge crowds were expected in Najaf and Karbala, where banners welcoming Khamenei adorned the streets. Large portraits of the late leader hung beside Iranian flags and photos of other slain commanders from Iran's “axis of resistance”.
In Najaf, mourners will join a six-kilometre (four-mile) procession ending at the majestic shrine of Imam Ali, the Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law and the first Shia Imam. Najaf is the main centre of Shia religious seminaries, and is also home to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's top Shia religious authority. Many senior Shia clerics have studied, taught or lived there, including Khamenei’s predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
After Najaf, Khamenei’s body will be flown to Karbala, about 60 kilometres north, for another procession that will culminate at the shrines of Imam Hussein and his brother Abbas.
Khamenei’s final burial will take place on Thursday in his hometown of Mashhad in northeast Iran.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was buried Tuesday after frenzied mourners knocked his body to the ground and ripped his white burial shroud to pieces for mementos of the revolutionary who ruled Iran for 10 years.
Thousands of Revolutionary Guards and civilians pushed and shoved around the graveside, kicking up clouds of dust as Khomeini's body was taken from a metal casket and lowered to the grave.”They are burying a sacred body,” screamed a television announcer, his voice hoarse with emotion, as soldiers piled concrete blocks on top of the shrouded body.
Khomeini, the driving force of Iran's Islamic revolution, died Saturday at age 86. Amid scenes of mass hysteria, the huge crowd surrounding the grave beat their heads with their hands in expressions of grief and threw dust on themselves to show they wanted to be buried with their spiritual patriarch.
Several people were knocked unconscious in crushes at the cemetery and earlier at Mosalla Mosque, where mourners halted the nearly 10-hour funeral procession. They blocked the path of a van driving the body to the cemetery, grabbed the corpse out of an open wooden coffin and ripped the shroud to pieces. The body fell to the ground. State television later showed mourners grabbing the body and pulling the shroud, until the feet could be seen. The broadcast then was cut off abruptly for several minutes.
The body was rewrapped, placed in a closed metal casket and airlifted to the Baheshte Zahra cemetery, with mourners clinging to the helicopter's landing sled until it was several feet off the ground.
https://www.deseret.com/1989/6/6/18810045/khomeini-buried-after-mourners-tear-off-shroud/