Latest news with #HosseinKermanpour
Al Bawaba
2 hours ago
- Health
- Al Bawaba
Iran: 224 killed, over 1,000 injured in Israeli strikes
ISTANBUL - At least 224 people have been killed and more than 1,000 wounded since Israel launched attacks on Iran, Iran's Health Ministry announced early Monday. Also Read Pakistan closes all border crossings with Iran amid tension "224 Iranian citizens were martyred and more than a thousand others were injured as a result of the attacks launched by the Israeli entity on sites inside the country during the past three days," the semi-official Mehr News Agency quoted the ministry as saying. Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesman for the ministry, said the total number of dead and wounded had reached 1,481. Among the casualties, 1,277 were taken to university hospitals for treatment, while the wounded were discharged after receiving medical care. More than 90% of the injuries occurred among civilians, including women and children, Kermanpour said in a social media post. The casualties follow escalating tensions after Israel launched strikes Friday on Iranian nuclear and missile facilities that killed military commanders and scientists, prompting Iran to retaliate with ballistic missiles and drones against Israeli targets.
Forbes
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Iran's Cities Were Bombarded In 1980s, Today's Attacks Could Be Worse
A plume of heavy smoke and fire rise from an oil refinery in southern Tehran, after it was hit in an ... More overnight Israeli strike, on June 15, 2025. Israel pressed its intense bombardment campaign on Iran on June 15, striking a defence facility and fuel depots as the two arch foes kept up their most intense confrontation in history. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP) (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images) Israel's unprecedented bombing campaign against Iran entered its fourth day on Monday, with its increasing toll on Iranian civilians worsening. Iranian cities and their residents haven't endured this level of bombardment since its eight-year war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s. Some analysts even contend that the present Israeli bombardments are already somewhat worse. Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour announced Sunday that the death toll from Israel's bombing has risen to at least 224 dead and 1,200 injured, 90 percent of whom he said were civilians, including 70 women and children. The single deadliest incident for civilians so far occurred on Saturday, when a Tehran apartment block collapsed, killing 60, half of them children. As Israel's bombing continued deep inside the capital, Tehran, on Sunday, several panicked residents upped and left, most of them heading for the more rural north for sanctuary. One 37-year-old Tehran resident quoted by Iran International explained how her 'elderly parents are reliving the traumas of the Iran-Iraq War every time a missile lands.' Millions of younger Iranians today have no memory of that war and its impact on civilians. While it was essentially a grinding World War I-style war of attrition, primarily fought along Iran's western border regions, the war also directly affected civilians far from the frontlines. With his infamous Scud and al-Husayn ballistic missiles, Saddam's forces would bring the war to civilians in major Iranian cities like Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz, and, of course, Tehran. In seven weeks of tit-for-tat missile exchanges in 1988, the war's final year, Iraqi missiles killed at least 2,000 Iranians and injured another 6,000. Two million residents fled Tehran, which then had a population of six million compared to over almost 10 million in the city alone today. Israel's ongoing bombardment hasn't resulted in this level of civilian casualties or displacement—at least not yet. 'Israel's military campaign in Iran is undeniably intense, precise, and severe – marking the most significant assault Iran has faced since the Iran-Iraq War,' Freddy Khoueiry, a global security analyst for the Middle East and North Africa at the risk intelligence company RANE, told me. 'That said, it has not yet reached the scale or devastation of the 1980s conflict, which spanned nearly a decade, crippled both nations' economies, and resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties.' 'Still, the economic implications from this war will be dire on Iranians.' Arash Azizi, a visiting fellow at Boston U and author of the 2020 book The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran's Global Ambitions, believes the present Israeli attacks are 'already more severe' than those historical Iraqi ones. 'That war included ground invasion of Iran, so that was a different angle,' Azizi told me. 'But nothing like this level of shock and awe existed in those attacks, nor did Saddam's army have the technological advancements of Israel's army today.' There are few places where most people in Tehran or other major cities can seek adequate shelter during these attacks, another striking parallel with the 1980s. In her renowned 2003 memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi recalled how Tehran lacked public bomb shelters and adequate civil defense during that time. 'Never once during the eight years of war did the government create a cohesive program for the safety and security of its citizens,' she wrote. 'Shelters meant the basements or the lower levels of apartment houses that sometimes buried you. Yet most of us did not realize our own vulnerability until later, when Tehran was also hit, like the other cities.' Today, Israeli strikes are hitting several parts of the densely-populated Iranian metropolis often frequented by and packed with civilians. Israeli strikes hit Niavaran and Tajrish in the affluent north, Hafte Tir Square in the central business district, and the 12-mile-long Valiasr Street, which is chronically clogged with traffic on normal days, that runs from north to south. 'The displacement of civilians has already begun,' Azizi said. 'Roads out of Tehran are in constant traffic as Tehranis flee to the north of Iran. Some will inevitably seek to leave via the Western land borders to Turkey and then beyond.' 'Israelis are now saying that causing an exodus out of Tehran is part of their plan as part of political destabilization.' Vehicles jam a highway as a fire blazes nearby in the oil depots of Shahran, northwest of Tehran, on ... More June 15, 2025. Israel and Iran exchanged fire on June 14, a day after Israel unleashed an unprecedented aerial bombing campaign that Iran said hit its nuclear facilities, "martyred" top commanders and killed dozens of civilians. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP) (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images) Iran has repeatedly hit Israel with ballistic missile bombardments since the Israeli operation, codenamed Rising Lion, began early Friday—a pre-dawn attack on Monday struck Tel Aviv and Haifa, killing at least eight Israelis. These Iranian missile strikes have killed at least 24 Israelis and injured another 592 as of writing. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday that residents of Iran's capital 'will have to pay the price of the dictatorship and evacuate their homes in areas where it will be necessary to strike regime targets and security infrastructure in Tehran.' 'The Israeli bombings, given their scale, are already unprecedented in the entire history of Iran,' Azizi said. 'This is similar to Saddam's invasion of Iran in the 1980s or the Allied invasion of Iran in 1941, even though there is no ground invasion this time.' RANE's Khoueiry believes that as the war shifts toward one of attrition, the humanitarian toll will rise along with increasing strikes against civilian infrastructure. 'Civilian displacement will likely worsen – and we've already seen footage of traffic heading out of Tehran – and the damage to critical infrastructure will place significant strain on Iran's economy, making recovery both slower and more expensive,' he said. Khoueiry believes a more apt comparison for Israel's present targeting of Iranian cities can be found in more recent wars between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 'Strategically, the current dynamics resemble Israel's war with Lebanon more than the Iran-Iraq conflict,' he said. 'In particular, Israel appears to be shifting towards its 'Dahiyeh Doctrine' – a military strategy focused on overwhelming force and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure to deter adversaries through widespread disruption and imposing economic costs.' While the Iraqi air and missile strikes of the 1980s caused significant death and destruction in Iran, the psychological effects they had on Iranians were arguably greater than the actual deaths and physical destruction they caused, especially near the war's end. In 1987-88, the Iranian population and leadership alike truly feared that Saddam would saturate the country's major population centers with lethal chemical agents, either dropped by warplanes or fitted atop his missiles. These fears certainly didn't come out of nowhere. Iraqi aircraft dropped mustard gas on the Iranian city of Sardasht in the West Azerbaijan province on June 28, 1987, killing 130 people and injuring around 8,000. Iraq's deadly chemical attack against Iraqi Kurdistan's eastern border town of Halabja on March 16, 1988, which killed 5,000 Kurdish civilians, mostly women and children, and remains the single deadliest gas attack against a civilian population in history, shocked the Iranians. 'The Iraqis showed in Halabja that if tomorrow they were to strike Tabriz in the same way, there would be nothing we could do about it,' Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, acting commander-in-chief of the Iranian military at the time, later recalled. 'Saddam's chemical bombings of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan and Sardasht in Iran had a huge psychological effect,' Azizi said. 'Sardasht is something of an Iranian Hiroshima (there are actually links between the two cities), and this is the lens through which we (Iranians) view Saddam and the Iraqi war,' he added. 'But Israeli attacks are also far and wide and have already killed so many civilians.' 'Israel will be seen in a similar light if it continues these attacks longer.'
Barnama
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Barnama
At Least 224 Killed, Over 1,000 Wounded In Israeli Strikes On Iran: Health Ministry
ISTANBUL, June 16 (Bernama-Anadolu) -- At least 224 people have been killed and more than 1,000 wounded since Israel launched attacks on Iran, Anadolu Ajansi (AA) reported, citing local media. "224 Iranian citizens were martyred and more than a thousand others were injured as a result of the attacks launched by the Israeli entity on sites inside the country during the past three days," the semi-official Mehr News Agency quoted Iran's Health Ministry as saying early Monday. Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesman for the ministry, said the total number of dead and wounded had reached 1,481.
United News of India
11 hours ago
- Health
- United News of India
Israeli strikes kill 244, injure 1,277 in Iran: Health ministry
Tehran, June 16 (UNI) Iran's Health Ministry spokesman Hossein Kermanpour said on Sunday that 244 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Iran over the past 65 hours. In a post on the social media platform X, Kermanpour noted that women and children were among the dead and that 1,277 people had been hospitalised. He added that over 90 per cent of the casualties were civilians. Early Friday, Israel launched airstrikes on Tehran and several other cities across Iran, killing a number of the country's top military commanders and nuclear scientists. The strikes continued across various parts of Iran on Saturday and Sunday. In response, Iran has launched missile attacks on multiple targets in Israel since Friday, causing casualties and significant damage. UNI XINHUA ARN
India Today
16 hours ago
- Politics
- India Today
224 killed since Israel attacks began, over 90% civilians: Iran's health ministry
Iran's health ministry reported on Sunday that 224 people have been killed since Israel started its attacks on Friday. Spokesman Hossein Kermanpour said on social media that 1,277 others were hospitalised. He stressed that over 90% of the casualties were situation between the two nations escalated when Israel launched airstrikes targeting Iran's nuclear and military sites. These attacks killed several top generals and nuclear scientists. Both countries have shown no sign of stopping, raising fears of a long General Mohammad Kazemi, the intelligence chief of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and his deputy, General Hassan Mohaqiq, have been killed in Israeli airstrike on Tehran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed in an interview with Fox News. Israel says 14 people have been killed and 390 injured within its borders since the attacks began. According to news agency Reuters, Iran has fired over 270 missiles at Israel, some of which struck buildings despite Israel's air AND IRAN ISSUE WARNINGSIsrael warned Iranians living near weapons factories to leave immediately. Meanwhile, Iran's military warned Israelis not to stay near "occupied" Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said from Bat Yam, where six people died in a missile strike, "Iran will pay a heavy price for the murder of civilians, women and children."advertisementThe Israeli airstrikes have hit not only military sites but also Iranian oil refineries. Iran's Foreign Ministry building was also struck, injuring several employees, including government President Masoud Pezeshkian blamed the United States for supporting Israel and warned that if Israel's "hostile actions" continue, Iran's response "will be more decisive and severe."Israel claims its attacks aim to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. However, Iran denies the claims, saying its nuclear program is peaceful. Netanyahu said in a Fox News interview that regime change in Iran "could certainly be the result" of the conflict. He also alleged that Iran planned to give nuclear weapons to its allies in inputs from Associated PressTune InMust Watch
