Vast crowds of Iranians massed in Tehran on Saturday to begin almost a week of funeral ceremonies for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who was assassinated in a US-Israeli strike on the first day of the Middle East conflict — an event intended to send a message of defiance to the West after the US-Iran war. Clad in black and waving blood-red flags seen as a call for vengeance and justice, mourners thronged the Grand Mosalla religious complex in Tehran, AFP correspondents said. Authorities believe the ceremonies will mobilise more than 10 million people in the capital alone for tributes to the man who ran the country for three-and-a-half decades. Six days of funeral ceremonies are planned to commemorate Khamenei, who ruled the Islamic republic as its number one from 1989 until his assassination aged 86 on the first day of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28. AFP photographs showed the coffins of Khamenei and four other family members at the front on a dais. There was still no sign of Khamenei’s so...