Crowds of Iranians have gathered in front of the Iraqi embassy in the Iranian capital to mourn the death of the Iraqi Shia leader who has succumbed to lung cancer.

Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), died on Wednesday in a Tehran hospital after battling the illness for 28 months.

Al-Hakim's body was expected to be taken from the Iraqi embassy to Qom,  the clerical nerve-centre of Iran, before being flown to Iraq later on Thursday for burial in the Shia holy city of Najaf.

Funeral procession

A correspondent for the AFP news agency said a short funeral procession would be held soon.

Al-Hakim, 60, had fought the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, the executed president, and was praised by political leaders in both Iraq and Iran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, called al-Hakim's death "a great loss for the Iraqi people".

He paid particular tribute to al-Hakim's family, describing them as "revolutionaries", the official IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

In 1982, al-Hakim helped to establish an opposition movement in exile in Iran to battle Saddam's Sunni-dominated government, and returned to Iraq after the US-led invasion of 2003.

His SIIC party swept Shia areas in the first provincial elections after the invasion, but in elections this January it suffered major losses.