Foreign News

Huge anti-government protests in Tehran and other Iranian cities, videos show

Published

1 month ago

2026/01/9

Priyan

In videos from Mashhad, protesters can be heard chanting "Long live the shah" [BBC]

Huge crowds of protesters have been marching through Iran’s capital and other cities, videos show, in what is said to be the largest show of force by opponents of the clerical establishment in years.

The peaceful demonstrations in Tehran and the second city of Mashhad on Thursday evening, which were not dispersed by security forces, can be seen in footage verified by BBC Persian.

Later, a monitoring group reported a nationwide internet blackout.

Protesters can be heard in the footage calling for the overthrow of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the return of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late former shah, who had urged his supporters to take to the streets.

It was the 12th consecutive day of unrest that has been sparked by anger over the collapse of the Iranian currency and has spread to more than 100 cities and towns across all 31 of Iran’s provinces, according to human rights groups.

The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) has said at least 34 protesters – five of them children – and eight security personnel have been killed, and that 2,270 other protesters have been arrested.

Norway-based monitor Iran Human Rights (IHR) has said at least 45 protesters, including eight children, have been killed by security forces.

BBC Persian has confirmed the deaths and identities of 22 people, while Iranian authorities have reported the deaths of six security personnel.

On Thursday evening, videos on social media and verified by BBC Persian showed a large crowd of protesters moving along a major road in Mashhad, in the country’s north-east.

Chants of “Long live the shah” and “This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return” can be heard. And at one point, several men are seen climbing on an overpass and removing what appears to be surveillance cameras attached to it.

Another video posted online showed a large crowd of protesters walking along a major road in eastern Tehran.

In footage sent to BBC Persian from the north of the capital, another large crowd is heard chanting “This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return”. Elsewhere in the north, protesters were filmed shouting “Dishonourable” and “Don’t be afraid, we are all together” following a clash with security forces.

Other videos showed protestors chanting “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Khamenei – in the central city of Isfahan; “Long live the Shah” in the northern city of Babol, and “Don’t be afraid, we are all together” in the north-western city of Tabriz.

In the western city of Dezful, footage sent to BBC Persian showed a large crowd of protesters and also security personnel appearing to open fire from a central square.

The evening protests came not long after Reza Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution and lives in Washington DC, had called on Iranians to “take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands”.

In a post on X, Pahlavi said “millions of Iranians demanded their freedom tonight”, describing the protesters as his “courageous compatriots”.

He thanked US President Donald Trump for holding the “regime to account”, and called on European leaders to do the same.

Pahlavi has also called for protests to continue from 20:00 local time (16:30 GMT) on Friday night.

Iranian state media downplayed the scale of Thursday’s unrest. In some cases, they denied protests had taken place altogether, posting videos of empty streets.

Meanwhile, internet watchdog NetBlocks said its metrics showed that Iran was “in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout”.

“The incident follows a series of escalating digital censorship measures targeting protests across the country and hinders the public’s right to communicate at a critical moment,” it warned, referring to previous losses of connectivity in several cities.

Earlier in the day, footage from Lomar a small town in the western province of Ilam showed a crowd chanting “Cannons, tanks, fireworks, mullahs must go” – a reference to the clerical establishment. Another showed people throwing papers into the air outside a bank that appeared to have been broken into.

Other videos showed many shuttered shops in a number of predominantly Kurdish cities and towns in Ilam, as well as Kermanshah and Lorestan provinces.

It followed a call for a general strike by exiled Kurdish opposition groups in response to the deadly crackdown on protests in the region.

At least 17 protesters have been killed by security forces in Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan during the unrest, and many of them have been members of the Kurdish or Lor ethnic minorities, according to Kurdish human rights group Hengaw.

On Wednesday, there were violent clashes between protesters and security forces in several cities and towns in western Iran, as well as other regions.

IHR said it had been the deadliest day of the unrest, with 13 protesters confirmed to have been killed across the country.

“The evidence shows that the scope of crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day,” said the group’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

Hengaw said two protesters were shot dead by security forces in Khoshk-e Bijar, in the northern province of Gilan, on Wednesday night.

Iran’s semi-official news agency Fars, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, reported that three police officers were also killed on Wednesday.

It said two were shot dead by armed individuals among a group of “rioters” in the south-western town of Lordegan, and the third was stabbed to death “during efforts to control unrest” in Malard country, west of Tehran.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump reiterated his threat to intervene militarily if Iranian authorities killed protesters.

“I have let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots – they have lots of riots – if they do it, we are going to hit them very hard,” he said in an interview with the Hugh Hewitt Show.

Separately, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the Iranian economy was “on the ropes”.

While speaking at the Economic Club of Minnesota on Thursday, he added: “President Trump does not want them to harm more of the protesters. This is a tense moment.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier called on security forces to exercise “utmost restraint” when handling peaceful protests. “Any violent or coercive behaviour should be avoided,” a statement said.

Khamenei – who has ultimate power in Iran – said on Saturday that authorities should “speak with the protesters” but that “rioters should be put in their place”.

The protests began on 28 December, when shopkeepers took to the streets of Tehran to express their anger at another sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, against the US dollar on the open market.

The rial has sunk to a record low over the past year and inflation has soared to 40% as sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme squeeze an economy also weakened by government mismanagement and corruption.

University students soon joined the protests and they began spreading to other cities, with crowds frequently heard chanting slogans critical of the clerical establishment.

In messages sent to the BBC, via a UK-based activist, a woman in Tehran said despair was driving the protests. “We’re living in limbo,” she said. “I feel like I’m hanging in the air with neither wings to migrate nor hope to pursue my goals here. Life here has become unbearable.”

Another said she was protesting because her dreams had been “stolen” by the clerical establishment and she wanted it to know that “we still have a voice to shout, a fist to punch them in the face.”

A woman in the western city of Ilam said she knew of young people from families affiliated with the establishment who were taking part in protests. “My friend and her three sisters, whose father is a well-known figure in the intelligence services, are joining without their father knowing,” she said.

The protests have been the most widespread since an uprising in 2022 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. More than 550 people were killed and 20,000 detained by security forces over several months, according to human rights groups.

The biggest protests since the Islamic revolution took place in 2009, when millions of Iranians took to the streets of major cities after a disputed presidential election. Dozens of opposition supporters killed and thousands were detained in the ensuing crackdown.

[BBC]

All News Advertisement

Foreign News

Two Britons among three dead in French Alps avalanche

Published

16 hours ago

2026/02/14

Priyan

Two Britons and one French person have died in an avalanche in the French Alps on Friday.

The British pair were part of a group of five people skiing off-piste with an instructor in the Manchet valley, near Val d’Isère, a spokeswoman for the resort told the BBC.

The French national was skiing alone when the avalanche struck at 11:30 local time (10:30 GMT), Albertville prosecutor Benoit Bachelet said in a statement announcing the deaths.

Another British person has minor injuries, he added.

A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told the BBC they are aware of the death of the two British men and they are “in contact with the local authorities and stand ready to offer consular assistance”.

A manslaughter investigation has now been launched by the Albertville public prosecutor’s office and will be carried out by CRS Alpes mountain rescue police.

The ski instructor, who was unharmed, tested negative after taking alcohol and drug tests, according to Bachelet.

Val d’Isère already experienced avalanches this winter, with one person dying in the resort of Tignes nearby last month.

France’s national weather service had issued a red alert for avalanche risk across the Savoie region on Thursday, which was then lifted on Friday. But the risk level remained high across the Alps with “very unstable snow cover”.

The avalanche comes in the wake of Storm Nils, which passed through France the day before, leaving between 60cm and 100cm of snow, the weather service said.

There have been a number of fatal avalanches in the region in recent weeks, including the death of a British man off-piste skiing at the La Plagne resort in January.

“We have had some very complicated, very unstable snow since the beginning of the season,” Luc Nicolino, slopes manager at La Plagne, told AFP.

“It’s a kind of mille-feuille with many hidden, fragile layers.”

[BBC]

Foreign News

Mexican ships arrive in Cuba with humanitarian cargo amid US oil blockade

Published

1 day ago

2026/02/13

Priyan

A Mexican-flagged ship, the Papaloapan, arrives in Havana, Cuba, on February 12 loaded with humanitarian supplies [Aljazeera]

Two Mexican ships bearing humanitarian aid have docked in the harbour of Cuba’s capital Havana, as the United States continues its efforts to cut the island off from outside fuel supplies.

On Thursday, pedestrians on Havana’s seawall watched as the ships, one of which was the Papaloapan, unloaded white pallets on shore.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the delivery in her morning news conference, promising that more help was on the way.

“We are sending different forms of help, different forms of support,” Sheinbaum said. “Today, the ships arrive. When they return, we are going to send more support of a different type.”

She also described her country’s role as “opening the doors for dialogue to develop” between Cuba and the US, but she insisted that maintaining Cuba’s sovereignty would be paramount among her priorities.

Since January, the administration of US President Donald Trump has sought to cut off the oil supplies that power Cuba’s energy grid and other critical infrastructure.

The campaign is part of a long-running series of sanctions imposed by the US on the Caribbean island nation, stretching back to the Cold War.

But the latest effort, under Trump, has experts at the United Nations warning of an imminent humanitarian “collapse” in Cuba, as oil supplies dwindle.

The oil embargo began on January 3, when Trump authorised a US military operation to attack Venezuela and abduct its then-leader, President Nicolas Maduro, and his wife Cilia Flores.

[Aljazeera]

Foreign News

Kim Jong Un chooses teen daughter as heir, says Seoul

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/12

Priyan

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has selected his daughter as his heir, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Thursday.

Little is known about Kim Ju Ae, who in recent months has been pictured beside her father in high-profile events like a visit to Beijing in September- her first known trip abroad.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said it took a “range of circumstances” into account including her increasingly prominent public presence at official events” in making this assessment.

The NIS also said it would keep close tabs on whether she will attend the North’s party congress later this month – its largest political event that is held once every five years.

The party Congress is where Pyongyang is expected to give more details about priorities like foreign policy, war planning and nuclear ambitions for the next five years.

On Thursday lawmaker Lee Seong-kwen told reporters that Ju Ae, who was previously described by the NIS as being “trained” to be a successor, was now at the stage of “successor designation”.

“As Kim Ju Ae has shown her presence at various events, including the founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Army and her visit to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, and signs have been detected of her voicing her opinion on certain state policies, the NIS believes she has now entered the stage of being designated as successor,” Lee said.

Ju Ae is the only known child of Kim Jong Un and his wife, Ri Sol Ju. The NIS believes Kim Jong Un has an older son, but this son has never been acknowledged nor shown on North Korean media.

News of Ju Ae’s existence first emerged through an unlikely source: the American basketball player Dennis Rodman, who revealed to The Guardian newspaper back in 2013 that he “held baby Ju Ae” during a trip to the secretive state.

Ju Ae – who is believed to be 13 – made her first appearance on state television in 2022. She was shown inspecting North Korea’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile while holding her father’s hand.

She has since made frequent appearances on on state media, softening her father’s image of a ruthless dictator. She accompanied him to Beijing for China’s largest-ever military parade, where she was seen stepping off his armoured train at Beijing Railway Station.

She is often seen wearing her hair long, which is forbidden for her peers, and wearing designer clothes, which are out of reach for most in her country.

Another lawmaker, Park Sun-won said the role Ju Ae had taken on during public events indicated that she has started to provide policy input and is being treated as the de facto second-highest leader.

The North Korean power had passed down the three generations of the Kim family, and it is widely believed that Kim Jong Un will pass on the throne to Ju Ae.

In recent months, she was shown standing taller than her father, walking beside him, rather than following him.

In North Korea, where photos published by the state media are believed to carry a great symbolic weight, it is rare for individuals other than Kim Jong Un to be positioned equally prominently in the frame.

Although the South Korean spy agency now believes Ju Ae is the designated heir, it still raises questions.

It is puzzling why Ju Ae, a daughter, would be selected as the heir above an older son in North Korea’s deeply patriarchal society.

Many defectors and analysts had previously dismissed the idea of a woman leading North Korea as an unlikely scenario, referring to the country’s entrenched traditional gender roles. But Kim Jong Un’s sister – Kim Yo Jong – does offer a precedent for female authority in the regime.

Kim Yo Jong currently holds a senior position in the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and is reported to have influence over her brother.

However, it is also a mystery why Kim Jong Un, who is still young and appears relatively healthy, is already designating a 13-year-old child as his heir now.

It is unclear what changes Ju Ae’s succession may bring to North Korea.

Many North Koreans hoped that Kim Jong Un, a Western-educated young man, would open their country up to the outside when he succeeded his father.

Yet such hope was unfulfilled. Whatever plans this teenager may have for her country, she would likely have the singular power to shape it however she likes.

[BBC]