Iranian state television presenters announced the death of Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, the 79-year-old wife of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after she succumbed to injuries sustained in the same US-Israeli airstrike that killed her husband at his compound in Tehran.
She died two days after Khamenei was killed, The Wall Street Journal reported. State television declared that Bagherzadeh’s “long dream of martyrdom became true” and said her death would spark “a massive uprising in the fight against oppressors.”
The announcement followed an earlier broadcast in which an anchor tearfully reported the Supreme Leader’s death. Iran declared an official 40-day mourning period and a seven-day national holiday.
According to the Daily Mail, Bagherzadeh married Khamenei in 1965. They had four sons and two daughters.