Death toll from Israeli attack on Iran prison at least 71: Official
Israel’s attack on Evin prison in Iran’s capital, Tehran, killed 71 people last week, Iranian judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir says.
“In the attack on Evin prison, 71 people were martyred, including administrative staff, youth doing their military service, detainees, family members of detainees who were visiting them and neighbours who lived in the prison’s vicinity,” Jahangir said in remarks published on the judiciary’s news outlet, Mizan.
He said Israeli forces attacked a hall where several family members were visiting prisoners.
UN human rights spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan said last week that attacking the prison was “a grave breach of international humanitarian law”, without naming Israel.
Israel struck the Evin Prison on June 23
Images shared by Iran’s judiciary showed destroyed walls, collapsed ceilings, scattered debris, and broken surfaces across waiting areas at the facility. Evin’s medical centre and visiting rooms had been targeted, the judiciary said.
Iran had previously not announced any death figures. It confirmed that top prosecutor Ali Ghanaatkar, whose prosecution of dissidents drew condemnation from human rights campaigners, was killed in the attack and would be buried at a shrine in Qom.
Prisoners held at Evin have included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi as well as several French nationals and other foreigners.
UN nuclear watchdog: Iran could enrich uranium in ‘months’
Iran could resume enriching uranium within months, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi says.
“The capacities they have are there. They can have – in a matter of months, I would say – a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium,” Grossi said in a CBS News interview broadcast on Sunday.
The extent of damage caused by last week’s US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities remains unclear. President Trump has maintained that the US bombings set Iran’s nuclear programme back by “years”.
But Grossi told CBS, “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”
The IAEA is primarily interested in locating enriched uranium in Iran, he said, adding the UN agency has for years been asking why it found traces of enriched uranium in various places. “And we were simply not getting credible answers. If there was material – where is this material? So, there could be even more. We don’t know.”
