LYON: Some 1,000 people rallied in the French city of Lyon on Sunday in support of unprecedented anti-regime protests in Iran, AFP journalists saw.
The protesters walked through the streets of the eastern city carrying a banner that read “Woman, life, freedom” and chanting the words, which have become the slogan of the protests.
Demonstrations in Iran began after the September 16 death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22. She had been arrested by morality police who enforce a strict dress code which requires women to wear a scarf-like covering over their hair and neck.
The protests have escalated into calls for an end to the Islamic regime, posing the biggest challenge for the clerics since the 1979 revolution deposed the shah.
Authorities have responded with deadly violence that has left hundreds dead.
Thousands have been arrested and 14 detainees sentenced to death, many for killing or attacking security force members, according to the judiciary. Four have been executed, the latest two on Saturday.
Many of Sunday’s protesters in France had a personal connection to the country.
“I am here to demand freedom in Iran,” Sholeh Golrokhi, 49, said. “When I was little, they arrested all of my family.”
“We are here to ask Western countries to be the voice of our people” and “expel Iranian ambassadors,” said Samane Ramezanpanah, 35.
In late December a 38-year-old Iranian man drowned in the Rhone river that flows through Lyon, saying on social media that he was going to kill himself to draw attention to the crackdown of the protests in Iran.
Hundreds rally in French city in support of Iran protests
https://arab.news/z2fqs
Hundreds rally in French city in support of Iran protests
- The protesters walked through the streets of the eastern city carrying a banner that read “Woman, life, freedom”
- Many of Sunday’s protesters in France had a personal connection to the country
Lebanon says one killed in Israeli strike on Palestinian refugee camp
- NNA said “an Israeli drone” targeted a neighborhood of the Ain Al-Helweh camp
- It reported that one person was killed and an unspecified number wounded
SIDON, Lebanon: An Israeli strike on Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp killed one person on Friday, state media reported, with the Israeli army saying it had targeted the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The official National News Agency said “an Israeli drone” targeted a neighborhood of the Ain Al-Helweh camp, which is located on the outskirts of the southern city of Sidon.
It reported that one person was killed and an unspecified number wounded.
An AFP correspondent saw smoke rising from a building in the densely populated camp as ambulances headed to the scene.
The Israeli army said in a statement that its forces “struck a Hamas command center from which terrorists operated.”
Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon despite a November 2024 ceasefire that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with the militant group Hezbollah.
Israel has also struck targets belonging to Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally Hamas, including in a raid on Ain Al-Helweh last November that killed 13 people.
The UN rights office had said 11 children were killed in that strike, which Israel said targeted a Hamas training compound, though the group denied it had military installations in Palestinian camps in Lebanon.
In October 2023, Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in support of Hamas at the outset of the Gaza war, triggering months of exchanges that culminated in two months of all-out war in Lebanon.
On Sunday, Lebanon said an Israeli strike near the Syrian border in the country’s east killed four people, as Israel said it targeted operatives from Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.
