Foreign News
Huge anti-government protests in Tehran and other Iranian cities, videos show
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]
A rare pink diamond is going on display in France for the first time since it was stolen almost 100 years ago to the day – the last time it was shown to the public.
The nine-carat, pear-shaped gemstone known as the “Grand Condé” was pilfered in an overnight raid on the Château de Chantilly in October 1926 and concealed in a hollowed-out apple.
The diamond – one of few royal jewels to survive the French Revolution – was recovered a few weeks later when a hungry maid at the hotel in which the thieves were staying took a bite of the apple.
It will once again be on display in the Condé Museum at the Château de Chantilly until 3 January.
The museum’s director Mathieu Deldicque said that while the apple story may sounds far-fetched, it was widely covered by newspapers at the time.
Deldicque has faced questions about whether the exhibition may be tempting fate, especially given the string of heists on European cultural institutions in the past 12 months, including the daring daylight robbery of jewellery from the Louvre museum in Paris.
While he declined to reveal to CNN how much the diamond was insured for, he noted that extensive academic study into the properties of the diamond had taken place to make it uniquely identifiable.
The results of this analysis, as well as previously unseen archive material about the gem’s history and theft, form part of the exhibition, according to the museum.
Naturally occurring pink diamonds are exceptionally rare and often sell for tens of millions of dollars. The highest price ever fetched for one at auction was $71.2m (£53.6m) in 2017, according to Sotheby’s.
The exact origins of the Grand Condé remain a mystery.
It was first mentioned in 1740 in an inventory of Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, drawn up following his death, the Château de Chantilly said.
It then became part of the collection of Queen Marie-Amélie of Bourbon-Sicily, the wife of French King Louis Philippe I, and then her son, Prince Henri of Orléans, the Duke of Aumale.
He bequeathed it to the Institut de France, which now owns the Château de Chantilly, 50km (31 miles) north of Paris, along with thousands of artworks and manuscripts which became the Musée Condé collection.
(BBC)
A nursery owner and five members of her staff have been jailed after they were found to have poisoned more than 200 children with lead-tainted food.
Li Huifang, who operated the Heshi Peixin Kindergarten in Tianshui, in the Gansu province, was sentenced to life in prison for producing and selling toxic and harmful food, according to Chinese state media.
In July 2025, 247 pupils and staff at the nursery were found to have abnormally high blood lead levels after children began falling ill.
A report into the incident found that chefs at Heshi Peixin had used inedible paint to “enhance the look” of its meals to attract more students – despite the paint being being clearly marked as such.
In addition to the sentence, the Lanzhou Intermediate People’s Court also ordered the confiscation of 500,000 yuan (£56,200; $74,700) of Li’s personal assets, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Nursery executive principal Zhi Jinglin was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 300,000 yuan.
Four other members of staff who worked in the nursery’s kitchen received sentences of between six to eight years, according to state media.
The court found the four had been instructed by Li and Zhi to add toxic and harmful ingredients to food served to children and staff.
Food samples were later found to contain lead 2,000 times in excess of China’s national safety limit.
The investigation into the poisoning began after 235 children from Heshi Peixin nursery had to be treated for lead poisoning after eating steamed red date cakes and sausage corn buns.
Investigators found that the red date cake and the corn sausage rolls had lead levels of 1052mg/kg and 1340mg/kg respectively, both of which far exceed the national food safety standard limit of 0.5mg/kg.
Lead poisoning is “particularly harmful to young children” and can “severely damage the brain and central nervous system”, according to the World Health Organization.
Officials later found that dozens of provincial officials and hospital staff attempted to cover up the incident by tampering with blood tests and accepting bribes from a nursery investor.
China has since published a set of national guidelines for the provision of meals on campuses. Among the measures is the requirement for every new batch of food to be tested, and for flour, rice and cooking oil to be purchased from centralised procurement points only.
(BBC)
Five people have been killed and 16 injured in a Houthi missile attack targeting the presidential palace in the port city of Aden in southern Yemen, which is the seat of the internationally-recognised government, officials say.
Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani told the BBC that the prime minister and other ministers were unhurt when five ballistic missiles hit al-Maashiq Palace.
The Houthis’ military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said they struck “the Saudi enemy’s military operations headquarters in Aden”.
A coalition led by Saudi Arabia backs the government and is providing air support for an offensive by pro-government forces against the Iran-backed Houthis.
Yemeni health minister Qasim Buhaibeh said the casualties included “those working to guard the site and civilian employees”.
The country’s Prime Minister Shaya Zindani condemned the Houthis’ attack on Aden, calling it “cowardly” and a “continuation of their criminal behaviour”.
He said the government continued to carry out its duties and vowed that it would not weaken the resolve of its forces to continue operations against the Houthis on Yemen’s south-western Red Sea coast and other front lines.
Earlier, the Houthis denied that they had attacked Saudi Arabia on Thursday, after the coalition said its forces had intercepted a cruise missile in the Medina region, home to one of Islam’s holiest shrines.
The Houthis have been launching missiles and drones at airports, oil and gas facilities, and military bases in Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the strikes on the territory that they control in western Yemen, including the capital Sanaa.
On Saturday, a Houthi missile strike killed 13 people at Riyadh’s international airport, which was the deadliest attack in Saudi Arabia in more than a decade.
Saudi Arabia’s deputy foreign minister accused Iran of encouraging the Houthis to escalate their conflict with the kingdom.
“Iran continues to arm, train and support the Houthi militia in violation of UN Security Council resolutions,” Rayed Krimly told reporters, according to AFP news agency.
“We think that the escalation by the Houthis at this latest stage of the conflict is encouraged by Iran,” he added.
There was no immediate response from Iran’s government. However, it has previously denied supplying weapons to the Houthis and said it only supports them politically.
Iran’s foreign minister has also said it is ready to provide “any assistance necessary to facilitate the start of talks” between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.
Yemen has been devastated by a civil war that began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the internationally-recognised government from Sanaa. The conflict escalated in 2015, after the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened in an attempt to restore the government’s rule.
A four-year-old informal ceasefire began to unravel in July, when the Houthis announced a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and began missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.
The Houthis said they were retaliating for what they call a Saudi blockade of their territory, as well as an air strike on Sanaa airport that they blamed on the kingdom.
The conflict escalated in September after the Houthis seized part of Yemen’s south-western Red Sea coast near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a chokepoint for global shipping. Their advance contributed to a rise in oil prices following six months of war between the US, Israel and Iran.
Last week, pro-government forces said they had regained control of territory overlooking Bab al-Mandab after launching a major counter-offensive with the support of Saudi air strikes.
At least 1,282 people have been killed and 5,890 injured in the fighting in Yemen since 6 August, according to the government’s health ministry.
The UN says another 201,000 people have been displaced and that there has been an alarming surge in suspected cholera cases.
(BBC)
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