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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “several thousand people” died in this month’s anti-government demonstrations, his first acknowledgment of the deadly scale of the unrest.
Some of those were killed “brutally and inhumanely”, Khamenei said without offering details in a public meeting broadcast on state TV. He accused the US and Israel of aiding the killings and said the Islamic Republic had evidence to support the claim.
Iran did not intend to push the country towards war, but would not allow either domestic or international criminals to go unpunished, he said.
He said US President Donald Trump was culpable for “deaths, damage and accusations he has inflicted on the Iranian people,” and that Washington’s broader policy goal was to place Iran under military, political and economic domination.
Iran considered Trump a “criminal” and that “the latest anti-Iran sedition was different in that the US president personally became involved,” Khamenei added.
The toll suggested was in line with estimates from human rights groups and others that some 3,500 people had perished. The groups estimate that more than 22,000 people have been detained.
