Choopan dairy's ice-cream effort, left, is displayed during a ceremony at the Tochal area north of Tehran Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP
A dairy company in Iran has claimed to have set a new world record for the largest tub of ice-cream.
Thousands of Iranians flocked to a ceremony on Monday held byChoopan dairy at the Tochal resort in Velenjak mountainous area north of the capital Tehran to unveil the five-tonne (11,023lb) chocolate dessert contained within a tub measuring at least 1.6 metres (5ft) by 2 metres.
"Right now, we are breaking the record which was registered in 2005 by Baskin-Robbins for about 4 tonnes," the event's organiser Khashayar Baheri told the state-run Press TV. "We're breaking that record by one tonne."
Choopan dairy's aim was to get into the record books. Organisers claim to have achieved their goal. Representatives from the Guinness World Records attended the ceremony, according to reports. But the organisation could not be immediately reached on Tuesday for any confirmation of the claim.
In September 2005, the US firm Baskin-Robbins set a world record by making a tub containing 4.02 tonnes of vanilla ice-cream.
Press TV's video dispatch showed a large crowd of Iranians attending the ceremony which was held during Nowruz, the Persian New Year, a 13-day Zoroastrian festival celebrated as the most important holiday of the Iranian calendar. The crowd was later rewarded with free ice-creams.
"First, I came to this event because it gives me national pride for our achievement and then, of course I love ice-cream," one woman told Press TV.
"I'm here with my family to see the biggest ice-cream in the world in Iran and Iranians are making it and I think everyone is having fun," said another person attending the event.
However, the conservative website Baztab-e-Emrooz reported a different version of the events. According to the site, the crowd's initial enthusiasm turned into anger after the organisers refused to serve people with ice-cream from the big tub and instead handing out normal ones. This has led to suspicion on whether the ice-cream was healthy and if Choopan had indeed set a record.
Thousands of Tehran citizens took the long journey to Tochal in the hopes of eating ice-cream from the big tub, the site said, but instead organisers said it will be distributed for charity later. A group of people chanted: "Lying shepherd, where is our ice-cream?" Choopan translates as "shepherd" in English.
Baztab said it was not clear whether the compnay would make it into the Guinness World Records given the circumstances.
The Associated Press reported that Iranians eat an average 1.5kg of ice-cream a year.