At least 22 people are dead following pro-Iran demonstrations in Pakistan in which lots of of people marched on the US consulate in Karachi. Security forces in Iraq have additionally fired teargas at protesters who tried to storm the US embassy in Baghdad.
As anger boiled over after US-Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a crowd of demonstrators in Karachi chanted in opposition to the offensive earlier than getting into the reception corridor of the consulate constructing and lighting a small hearth.
A video posted on social media confirmed a person yelling: “The death of the leader has been avenged.”
Ten people have been reported dead after safety forces opened hearth, with greater than 30 others injured, based on a neighborhood medical official.
Violence arising from protests elsewhere in Pakistan left 10 people dead in Gilgit-Baltistan and two dead in the capital, Islamabad.
In Iraq, safety forces fired teargas after lots of of pro-Iran protesters waving flags and throwing stones tried to storm Baghdad’s Green Zone, which homes the US embassy. In current days, US-Israeli strikes have focused Iran-backed armed teams in the nation, resulting in fatalities.
The killing of Khamenei has shaken the Middle East and the broader Islamic world. The 86-year-old Shia Islam cleric was Iran’s head of state for 36 years and oversaw the safety coverage that created a community of Iranian-backed militias throughout the area.
Iran-aligned teams, corresponding to Hamas, the Houthis, Iraqi militias and Hezbollah all issued statements of condolences and solidarity with Khamenei, who they praised as a mujahid – a non secular warrior – and a martyr.
“[Khamenei] was leading the march of jihad and resistance against the tyrannical and oppressive American and Israeli forces, enemies of religion and humanity,” the secretary normal of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, stated in a press release.
Under Khamenei, Iran educated, geared up and invested in teams corresponding to Hezbollah to create what it labelled an “axis of resistance” in the Middle East. Such teams labored for years to help Iran’s targets in the area and constituted an anti-US-Israeli bulwark.
In Lebanon, tens of hundreds of Hezbollah supporters and Shia Muslims got here out to the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sunday to mourn Khamenei, waving Hezbollah and Iranian flags and carrying photos of the late Iranian chief.
In Sanaa, Yemen, pro-Houthi media boasted of a “million-person march” in help of Iran and commemoration of Khamenei.
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Khamenei’s dying is a serious blow to an axis of resistance already severely weakened by Israel over the last two-and-a-half-years. It can also be one other symbolic wound to many Shia Muslims lower than 18 months after the dying of Hassan Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah till he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2024.
Both Khamenei and Nasrallah have been seen as main figures of resistance to western oppression.
One Lebanese girl from the southern suburbs of Beirut stated: “After the death of Nasrallah, we’re not surprised at anything any more. It’s over. Israel can kill whoever they want to, it seems.”
Not all mourned the lack of the Iranian chief, nonetheless.
In Syria, the place Iran was the best patron of Bashar al-Assad’s totalitarian regime till it was overthrown in 2024, people took to the streets on listening to the information. Some honked their automobile horns in celebration whereas others sang revolutionary slogans. When a handball match was interrupted to interrupt the information, the spectators and gamers cheered.
In Lebanon, opponents of Hezbollah celebrated Khamenei’s dying in non-public, cautious of scary the armed group’s supporters.
At authorities degree, in the meantime, the response throughout the Middle East has been extra muted, with most international ministries failing to remark in any respect on the dying of Khamenei, regardless of the extraordinary nature of a sitting head of state being assassinated by a international nation.
The transcription of a name between the international ministers of Oman and Iran on Sunday made no point out of Khamenei’s killing.
