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The funeral for Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will begin in Tehran on July 4 and conclude with his burial in his hometown, the northeastern holy city of Mashhad, on July 9, state media reported Saturday.July 4, the start date of the national funeral, will coincide with the United States's Independence Day, which this year celebrates its 250th anniversary.Khamenei was killed on the first day of Israeli and US airstrikes against Iran on February 28.The 86-year-old cleric had been at the helm of the Islamic Republic for 36 years.The funeral arrangements will include ceremonies on July 7 in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, media said.Islamic law requires the deceased to be buried as soon as possible, and ideally within 24 hours of death, but exceptions are allowed, for example in time of war.During his rule, Khamenei built Iran into a powerful anti-US force, spreading its military sway across the Middle East through proxy forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, while using an iron fist to crush outbreaks of unrest at home.Khamenei remained a strong critic of the United States throughout his rule, while successive administrations tried unsuccessfully to resolve a dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme.The airstrike that killed him pulverised his central Tehran compound.His 56-year-old son Mojtaba, who also lost his wife in the airstrike and was himself injured, succeeded his father as Supreme Leader.Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public since his appointment and communicates only through statements attributed to him.Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Saturday that Iran and the United States had agreed on a framework for a peace deal after more than three months of war and are expected to sign the initial deal in the next 24 hours. 

Water levels at the dam reservoirs supplying Iran's northeastern city of Mashhad plunged below 3%, media reported Sunday, as the country suffers from severe water shortages. "The water storage in Mashhad's dams has now fallen to less than three percent," Hossein Esmaeilian, the chief executive of the water company in Iran's second largest city by population, told ISNA news agency. He added that "the current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation -- it has become a necessity". Mashhad, home to around four million people and Iran's holiest city, relies on four dams for its water supply. **media[379422]** Esmaeilian said consumption in the city had reached around "8,000 litres per second, of which about 1,000 to 1,500 litres per second is supplied from the dams". It comes as authorities in Tehran warned over the weekend of possible rolling cuts to water supplies in the capital amid what officials call the worst drought in decades. In the capital, five major dams supplying drinking water are at "critical" levels, with one empty and another at less than 8% of capacity, officials say. "If people can reduce consumption by 20%, it seems possible to manage the situation without rationing or cutting off water," Esmaeilian said, warning that those with the highest consumption could face supply cuts first. Nationwide, 19 major dams -- about 10% of the country's reservoirs -- have effectively run dry, Abbasali Keykhaei of the Iranian Water Resources Management Company said in late October, according to Mehr news agency. **media[379423]** President Masoud Pezeshkian has cautioned that without rainfall before winter, even Tehran could face evacuation, though he did not elaborate. The water crisis in Iran follows month of drought across the country. Authorities over the summer announced public holidays in Tehran to cut back on water and energy consumption as the capital faced almost daily power outages during a heatwave. Local papers Sunday slammed what they described as the politicisation of environmental decision-making for the water crisis. The reformist Etemad newspaper cited the appointment of "unqualified managers... in key institutions" as being the main cause of the crisis. Shargh, another reformist daily, said that "climate is sacrificed for the sake of politics".