Their car was hit by a truck near the Western entrance of Gorgan and both were injured and died later in a hospital.

The two officials were accompanying Iran’s Minister of Labour and Welfare Mohammad Shariatmadari in the official visit.

Shriatmadari and provincial governor-general Seyyed Manaf Hasehmi had immediately arrived in Hakim Jorjani hospital to follow up closely the process of medical treatment of the officials.

Khalil Hanif, the director of provincial affairs at the ministry of jobs and social security was also injured in the accident.

Hadi Hashemian, the head of Golestan Judiciary said the driver has been arrested.

Bodies of Nourbakhsh and Tajeddin were transferred to Tehran for funeral procession on Friday morning, after a ceremony in Gorgan to commemorate the two high-ranking officials.

Social Security Organization (SSO) is a social insurer organization in Iran which provides coverage of wage-earners and salaried workers as well as voluntary coverage of self-employed persons.

A number of Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, fisrt Vice President Es'hagh Jahangiri, Chairman of Expediency Discernment Council Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi and AEOI head Ali Akbar Salehi have issued messages to express their condolences to their bereaved families and the people of Iran.

LR </s> TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s state TV is reporting that the managing director of the country’s social security agency and his deputy have been killed in a car crash in northern Iran.

The Thursday report said Taghi Nourbakhsh and his deputy, Abdolrahman Tajeddin, were injured in a car crash in northern Golestan Province and both died later in a hospital.

The Social Security Organization is a non-governmental organization that provides retirement, disability and unemployment insurance for wage-earners and salaried workers as well as self-employed persons who voluntarily pay in to the organization. The organization takes care of millions of people in Iran.

With some 17,000 casualties in road accidents in Iran each year, the country has one of the world’s worst traffic safety records. </s> According to the news website of Iranian government ‘dolat.ir’, Wednesday Dec. 26 will be a national day of mourning throughout Iran as a mark of respect for the late Chairman of the Expediency Council Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who passed away last night after a long-standing struggle with cancer.

In a message issued on Tuesday, the Iranian government offered condolences on the demise of Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei, the senior clergymen, seminaries, the honorable nation of Islamic Iran, and the family of the deceased cleric, and declared Wednesday as a national day of mourning. </s> TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's state TV is reporting that Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, head of the Expediency Council advisory body to the country's Supreme Leader, has died at the age of 70. </s> Funerals began Friday morning in the Iranian capital for 17 victims of two attacks this week by Islamic State militants, the first time in recent memory Sunni jihadists managed to strike the heart of the Shiite Islamic Republic.

Six attackers died — including five men and a woman who blew herself up — and several were detained in connection with the attacks at Iran’s parliament and the tomb of Iran’s revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. More than 50 people were wounded in the morning attack on parliament, which was in session.

According to an Iranian government statement, the male attackers had returned to the country last summer after fighting for Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqah, Syria, and had “intended to carry out terrorist operations in religious cities.” The statement did not say if the attackers were Iranian citizens.

Reza Seifollahi, deputy chief of the Supreme National Security Council, told the independent newspaper Shargh that the male attackers were Iranian.

Before a funeral procession at parliament early Friday for guards killed there, Iran's supreme leader said the attacks will add to Iranians’ hatred of the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the wake of the attacks, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard also released a statement implying that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were to blame.

Khamenei said the Wednesday attacks, "Will not damage the Iranian nation's determination and the obvious result is nothing except an increase in hate for the governments of the United States and their stooges in the region like Saudi."

Saudi Arabia has denied responsibility for the attacks.

Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, also spoke out ahead of the funerals.

“Daesh is an international danger," he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Mourners gathered outside the parliament complex Friday to watch the funeral procession, which followed a downtown candlelight vigil overnight.

Mohammad Rasouli, 66, sitting on the ground with a group across the street, said it was his duty to attend the procession and an afternoon funeral expected at 2 p.m. during weekly prayers.

"I came with my friends to show our solidarity with our supreme leader and nation. From here we go to Friday prayers. If we do not go there, Daesh will be emboldened," he said.

During the procession through parliament, the heads of Iran’s executive, legislative and judiciary branches all paid their respects, including President Hasan Rouhani, Larjani and the head of the judiciary, Sadeq Larijani Amoli.

Parliamentary staff who survived the attack also attended the procession under tight security. They stood alongside friends and family of the victims, who dressed in black. </s> Tehran (AFP) - The head of Iranian Railways has resigned after four of his employees were arrested following a collision between two trains that left at least 44 people dead.

Mohsen Poor-Seyed Aghaie, a deputy minister in the transport ministry and head of the state-owned railway company, appeared on state television late Saturday and announced his resignation "as a social responsibility and out of sympathy for the survivors of this accident".

Two trains collided and one caught fire in the northern province of Semnan on Friday, killing 44 people and injuring dozens more, in one of the country's worst ever rail disasters.

The crash took place on the main line between Tehran and Iran's second city Mashhad.

One of the trains had stopped between the towns of Semnan and Damghan after an apparent mechanical failure, forcing officials to halt others on the line.

But when a new shift started at the control centre in Shahroud, the second train was allowed to resume its journey.

The accident happened due to "human error", Aghaie said, explaining that the official at the control centre had told the train driver to manually disable an automated system that was preventing it from moving toward the broken train.

Three in the control centre and the train driver were detained over the resulting crash.

The train driver "who had fled to a hideout" was arrested on Sunday, a local judge in Seman province told the judiciary-linked Mizan Online website.

"During the investigation, three people in charge of the northeast train control centre based in the city of Shahroud... were arrested," provincial prosecutor general Heydar Asiabi told reporters.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered his condolences on Saturday for the "painful incident", which came just a day after more than 60 Iranian pilgrims were killed in a suicide attack in Iraq. </s> TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's state TV is reporting that Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, head of the Expediency Council advisory body to the country's Supreme Leader, has died at the age of 70.

The Monday report said Shahroudi was long sick and hospitalized in north Tehran. Reportedly, he was suffering from gastrointestinal cancer.

Shahroudi, a relatively moderate cleric, was appointed as chairman of the Expediency Council in 2017 by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The body arbitrates on differences between parliament and the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog.

Shahroudi was also chief of the judiciary from 1999 to 2009.

Born and raised in Najaf, Iraq, Sharoudi was close to the late leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, who spent years in exile there. </s> Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) killed three suspected militants in a security operation conducted on July 14 in the western part of the country near the border with Iraq, state media reports.

The IRGC, in a statement carried by Iran's official news agency IRNA, said that "antirevolutionary terrorists" had planned sabotage attacks after crossing the border into Iran in the Kermanshah region.

The statement did not give the identity of the militants. Kurdish opposition fighters based in northern Iraq are active in the border areas.

Iran and Iraq share a porous border and there is little coordination between the security forces of the two countries.

Islamic State militants last year carried out coordinated attacks on the parliament building in the capital, Tehran, and the mausoleum of Iran's Islamic revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini south of the capital, killing 18 people.

Based on reporting by IRNA and Reuters </s> Judicial authorities in Iran have arrested three railway employees, including two senior staffers, as part of an investigation into a recent deadly train collision in the north-central Iranian province of Semnan.

On Friday, a total of 45 people lost their lives and 103 others were injured in the collision of two passenger trains at a station in Semnan.

Semnan’s Prosecutor-General Heydar Asiabi said on Saturday that the head of the railway’s command and control center for northeast Iran, the head of the track control center, and the individual in charge of the particular shift at the center when the collision occurred had been arrested.

Asiabi referred to a message written by Iran’s Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani to the provincial Court of Justice to urge the expedient implementation of follow-up measures and said the Court acted accordingly.

Meanwhile, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has offered condolences over the train accident as well as a terrorist attack in Iraq that killed at least 73 people, including many Iranians, on Thursday.

The picture shows the wreckage of a truck following a bombing that targeted pilgrims returning from the Arba’een commemoration in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala, in the Iraqi village of Shomali, southeast of Baghdad, November 24, 2016. (By AFP)

In a message on Saturday, the Leader said the train collision had been caused by “intentional or unintentional mistakes and imprudence” on the part of those with relevant responsibilities, striking the families of the victims with grief.

“I ask authorities and those with responsibilities in both the domestic and foreign [affairs] area not to easily pass by these painful incidents and make the tackling of such traumas at their roots their top priority,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

Iranian First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri has expressed assurances of the stern criminal prosecution of those who have either intentionally or inadvertently caused the crash.

A motion has also been drawn up at the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) to impeach Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi, over the train accident.

The motion, which has drawn 20 signatures, is to be presented to Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani next Sunday.

The speaker of the Parliament has asked Majlis’ Civil Commission to send a committee tasked with probing the incident to the crash site and submit a final report to the legislature.

In the Saturday message, Ayatollah Khamenei also referred to the terrorist attack in the Shomali Village in the suburbs of al-Hillah, near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, and described the bombing as a “cowardly” and “outrageous” act.

The terrorist assault, which was carried out by the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, involved a truck bomb that exploded at a gas station in the Shomali Village, killing at least 73 people, including many Iranians, on Thursday.

The Leader said the Takfiris detested the massive demonstration of religious devotion in a secure environment by Muslims on the occasion of Arba’een, the 40th day since the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein (PBUH), a grandson of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and sought to take revenge with the bombing.

Similar terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world, such as in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, once again remind Muslims of the threat posed by Takfiris and the states supporting them, Ayatollah Khamenei noted.
Iran's Social Security Organization chairman Mohammad Taghi Nourbakhsh and his deputy die after a car accident during a visit to Gorgan.