A billboard showing a portrait of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes, looms over an empty square in Tehran, Iran, Thursday. AP-Yonhap
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian state television aired a message Thursday from an ayatollah in Iran calling for the “shedding” of blood from Israelis and U.S. President Donald Trump.
The message came from Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli and represented one of the few clerical statements coming from Iran as it faces a combined airstrike campaign from Israel and the United States.
“We are now on the verge of a great test and we must be careful to fully preserve this unity, to fully preserve this alliance,” he said in the statement.
He called for “the shedding of Zionist blood, the shedding of Trump’s blood.”
“The Imam of the time says, ‘Fight the oppressive America, his blood is on my shoulders,’” the ayatollah added.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran launched a new wave of attacks Thursday morning at Israeli and American bases and threatened that the United States would “bitterly regret” torpedoing an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean while Israel said it had begun a “large-scale” attack on Tehran.
Israel announced multiple incoming missile attacks and air sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Iranian state television said additional strikes also targeted U.S. bases. The Israeli military said it launched targeted attacks in Lebanon at the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group a “large-scale wave of strikes against infrastructure” in Iran’s capital, without elaborating. Explosions were heard in multiple locations in Tehran a short time later.
The U.S. Navy sank an Iranian warship Tuesday night in the Indian Ocean, killing at least dozens of Iranian sailors, which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi decried Thursday as “an atrocity at sea.”
Source: Korea Times News
