Tehran, Jan 7: Iranian state television says 35 people have been killed and 50 others injured in a stampede that erupted at a funeral procession for a general slain in a US airstrike.
The TV says the stampede erupted in Kerman, the hometown of Gen. Qassem Soleimani where the procession was underway on Tuesday.
A procession in Tehran on Monday drew over 1 million people in the Iranian capital, crowding both main thoroughfares and side streets in Tehran.
Hundreds of Israeli settlers conducted a brutal attack in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
The settlers set fire to numerous homes and vehicles of Palestinians and then moved to the main road connecting Ramallah to other cities, targeting Palestinian cars passing by.
They stormed the city of al-Bireh, near Ramallah, and burned Palestinian property and vehicles.
A woman sustained injuries after the settlers hurled stones at her vehicle, according to Palestinian news outlets.
Tension has been running high across the West Bank because of Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 43,341 people, mostly women and children, since last year’s October.
The Monday settler attack came as the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas warned of Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank and drive Palestinians out.
“We warn of the grave danger posed by the plans led by the extremist occupation regime and illegal settler groups to displace the residents of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank,” Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said.
Israel's far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the full annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip last week.
Smotrich asserted that Israel should unequivocally declare there would be no Palestinian state.
He repeated his proposal of expanding Israeli settlements within the West Bank and other occupied territories.
The Israeli regime has killed at least 40 people during new airstrikes against eastern Lebanese areas, besides targeting the country’s capital Beirut with fresh acts of aggression.
Lebanon’s health ministry announced the fatalities on Wednesday, saying 53 other people had also been wounded during the aerial attacks that targeted the country’s Bekaa Valley, including the city of Baalbek.
In early Thursday, the regime was also reported to have attacked Beirut’s southern suburbs, including a site adjacent to Rafiq Hariri International Airport.
The attacks came after the regime issued short-notice evacuation orders apparently directed at the residents of the areas, claiming that the areas contained facilities belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement.
Tel Aviv has been using similar claims on countless occasions since last October, when it markedly intensified its deadly acts of aggression against Lebanon, in order to try to justify the escalation. Hezbollah has, however, invariably refuted the claims.
Also on Wednesday, the United Nations warned in its most recent flash report on the humanitarian crisis caused by the Israeli atrocities targeting Lebanon that the aggression had “reached a critical point.”
The attacks have claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people, which was “58 percent more than the 1,900 fatalities” that were caused by the regime’s 2006 war against Lebanon, the report said.
“Additionally, an estimated 1.3 million people have been displaced, both within Lebanon and into neighboring countries, 33 percent more than the number of people displaced in 2006,” it added.
Women comprised the majority of those who had been rendered homeless within Lebanon as a result of the Israeli attacks, the report noted.
It also regretted that the Israeli attacks had featured 78 assaults on healthcare facilities across the country that had claimed the lives of 130 health workers and injured 111 others.
In response to the aggression, Hezbollah has been staging hundreds of retaliatory strikes against the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli forces trying to advance on southern Lebanese areas.
The movement has vowed to sustain its strikes until the regime ends the escalation.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon has warned that the “picture of life in Lebanon remains grim,” highlighting an "alarming" level of human suffering and significant humanitarian consequences due to the ongoing Israeli carnage.
Imran Riza, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL), provided a stark overview of the Arab country's dire circumstances in a statement released on Monday.
“The current picture of life in Lebanon remains grim. Yesterday, airstrikes reportedly killed 23 people, including seven children, in the village of Aalmat in Mount Lebanon,” Riza said on X.
An airstrike in the city of Tyre on the same day resulted in the tragic deaths of five siblings from a single family, all of whom had special needs, according to his statement.
He added that in the last week, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 241 individuals and left 642 others injured in Lebanon, as reported by the Ministry of Health.
“In the past month, more than 185,000 people have fled their homes in their search for safety within the country, bringing the total to over 870,000 people internally displaced,” Riza said
The UN official highlighted that numerous individuals, including the elderly and those with health issues, are staying behind while witnessing the ruins of their ancestral homes.
He urged for the swift safeguarding of civilian people and infrastructure, emphasizing the necessity to uphold international humanitarian law and end the ongoing violence.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli forces bombed a house in the town of Maydoun in Bekaa on Monday night, killing three people and destroying the house.
Earlier, Israel bombed the northern town of Ain Yaaqoub, killing at least 14 people.
The killings came as Israeli military continued to pound Lebanon, bombing shops selling electrical appliances in the southern city of Tyre and carrying out air raids on the towns of Shamshtar in eastern Baalbek and Roumine in southern Nabatieh.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks killed at least 54 people across the country on Monday.
Israel’s merciless attacks continue despite calls from the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and directives from the International Court of Justice urging measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and Lebanon.
In Lebanon, at least 3,243 people have been killed and 14,134 others wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.
The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah opened a support front for Palestinians in Gaza only a day after the Israeli regime unleashed its genocidal war on the besieged territory.
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