TEHRAN: Thousands of Iranians protested on Friday in the capital Tehran and other cities to condemn Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, AFP journalists and state media reported.
Officials had on Wednesday called on the nation to demonstrate in support of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon “and to condemn the barbaric crimes of the Zionist regime in Palestine,” the official IRNA news agency said.
Hezbollah is part of the “Axis of Resistance,” Iran-aligned armed groups across the Middle East which have targeted Israel, and also US forces, in support of Palestinian militants Hamas.
In Tehran after Friday prayers, a protest took place around Enghelab Square in the city center, an AFP journalist said.
Demonstrators carried portraits of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as well as Palestinian and Hezbollah flags.
“Israel is destroyed. Lebanon is victorious,” they chanted, deploring “a bloodbath in Lebanon.”
Protesters also burned Israeli and US flags.
State television aired footage of other demonstrations in Semnan, Qom, Kashan, Kermanshah, Shiraz and Bandar Abbas.
Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, triggering a war with Israel and near-daily cross-border fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel, which has hit back.
Those exchanges have intensified dramatically over the past week. Israeli raids on Lebanon since Monday have killed hundreds in the deadliest violence since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
As the violence escalates, analysts say Iran is walking a tightrope by trying to support Hezbollah without getting dragged into a full-blown conflict and playing into its enemy’s hands.
Iranians protest Gaza, Lebanon ‘bloodbath’
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Iranians protest Gaza, Lebanon ‘bloodbath’
- In Tehran after Friday prayers, a protest took place around Enghelab Square in the city center
- Demonstrators carried portraits of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as well as Palestinian and Hezbollah flags
Israeli strikes killed eight people in south Lebanon: state media
- Israeli strikes killed eight people in Lebanon on Thursday as Israel renewed its evacuation call for vast areas of the country’s south, long a stronghold of Hezbollah
BEIRUT: Israeli strikes killed eight people in Lebanon on Thursday as Israel renewed its evacuation call for vast areas of the country’s south, long a stronghold of Hezbollah.
The Iran-backed militant group, which dragged Lebanon into the regional war on Monday when it launched an attack on Israel, said it had launched missiles at positions in the Galilee area.
The National News Agency (NNA) reported that the mayor of a village in the Nabatieh region of south Lebanon and his wife were killed in one strike, while in a nearby village another strike killed two children and their parents.
The Lebanese health ministry said two people were killed by a strike on a car near the city of Zahle in the east of the country.
There were new strikes on the southern suburbs of the capital, Hezbollah’s main bastion, early on Thursday, NNA reported, with AFPTV footage showing smoke coming from the area.
It also said a pre-dawn Israeli drone strike hit an apartment in Beddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, killing senior Hamas official Wassim Atallah Al-Ali and his wife.
Also on Thursday, Israel renewed its warning to residents of hundreds of square kilometers (miles) of southern Lebanon to evacuate because of military action.
Arabic-language spokesman for the Israeli military Avichay Adraee posted on X: “Urgent warning to residents of southern Lebanon: you must immediately continue evacuating to the north of the Litani river.”
The warning included the cities of Tyre and Bint Jbeil.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it was creating a buffer zone inside Lebanon to protect Israeli residents.
The following day, it said troops from three divisions, including infantry, armored and engineering units were operating inside Lebanon.
