AFP: Hundreds of Islamist students marched in the streets of the Iranian capital on Thursday vowing their readiness to travel to Gaza to fight Israel over its onslaught against the Palestinian territory.
TEHRAN (AFP) — Hundreds of Islamist students marched in the streets of the Iranian capital on Thursday vowing their readiness to travel to Gaza to fight Israel over its onslaught against the Palestinian territory.
Male students in military fatigues and women who donned funeral shrouds over their chadors gathered in the grounds of the former US embassy in Tehran before heading to Tehran University.
The demonstrators shouted, "Death to Israel" and "Death to America", and held banners reading: "Israel must be uprooted with the help of Muslim nations."
They also torched pictures of outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is accused of siding with Israel in the deadly onslaught, the Fars news agency said.
The demonstration was organised by the so-called "Brigades of the Volunteers of Martyrdom" in response to a call by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Sunday urged Muslim nations to mobilise against Israel.
Other groups of Iranian students have been gathering outside Tehran for several days to press the authorities to allow them to go to Gaza to fight against Israel.
Israeli jets pounded targets of the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza for a sixth day on Thursday, as the death toll from the blitz hit 400, in retaliation for ongoing rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza but denies Israeli accusations that it provides arms and finance to the organisation, which remains blacklisted as a terror group by the West.
Iran does not recognise the Jewish state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has predicted that Israel is doomed to be wiped off the map.
