Protests took place in Tehran and other cities “in support of the persecuted children of Gaza” under the slogan “Palestine is not alone.”
Thousands of Iranians held marches across the country against Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, as a senior military commander warned that Israel was heading toward a long and bloody war with the Palestinian Hamas movement.
Demonstrations took place on Saturday in the capital, Tehran, and other cities, “in support of the persecuted children of Gaza” under the slogan “Palestine is not alone,” according to local media.
The Israeli air and ground campaign led to the deaths of an estimated 12,000 people in the Palestinian territories, including 5,000 children, according to the Palestinian authorities.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the attacks carried out by the movement on October 7, which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and captured about 240 people.
“Palestine stands on the path of a war of attrition… Israel will face final defeat and end up in the dustbin of history,” Commander Hossein Salami of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told the crowd in Tehran, which was broadcast live on television. television.
“The battle is not over yet. The Islamic world will do whatever it must do. There are still great things to come [unused] Salami said without indicating any possible moves by Iran to join the conflict.
“The Zionist entity [Israel] She can no longer see peace and security. Muslims will avenge the oppressed people of Gaza, and this revenge has no expiration date.
In Tehran, demonstrators waved Palestinian flags, while others carried banners reading “Down with America” and “Down with Israel,” according to Agence France-Presse.
Others set fire to Israeli flags, while some waved the flags of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, which has been locked in border skirmishes with Israel since October 7.
State television also showed some demonstrators carrying white shrouds symbolizing children killed in Gaza, during marches organized ahead of International Children’s Day on Monday.
Similar demonstrations took place in other major cities including Shiraz, Kerman and Isfahan.
Earlier this week, hundreds of body bags were placed in Tehran’s Palestine Square to protest Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.
Iran has made supporting the Palestinian cause a focus of its foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Iran, which supports Hamas financially and militarily, praised the October 7 attacks as “successful” but denied any involvement.
She also criticized the Israeli bombing of Gaza, calling it “genocide” while condemning the United States for its support for Israel.
On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser al-Kanani condemned the Israeli “attacks” on hospitals in Gaza.
“Attacking hospitals goes against all standards of human rights, international law and the Geneva Conventions and makes the criminal nature of this regime even clearer to the world,” he said on the X programme.
His statement came as hundreds of people fled Gaza’s main Shifa Hospital, where more than 2,000 patients, paramedics and displaced people were trapped.
Israel is intensifying its military operations inside the hospital, searching for a Hamas operations center that it claims is located under the sprawling complex – something Hamas denied.
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