The Iranian Red Crescent said on Monday that the death toll from U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran since Saturday has risen to 555.
The joint attacks targeted 131 residential areas across Iran, it added in a statement cited by the Fars News Agency.
The statement confirmed that the attacks claimed 555 lives, but did not provide statistics on the number of injured.
The last casualty count announced by the Iranian Red Crescent on Saturday was 201 dead and 747 injured.
A joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign launched against Iran on Saturday has killed several senior Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In response, Tehran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel, U.S. assets and Gulf countries.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, has warned that the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran, assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will have “deep and widespread” consequences.
The responsibility of which he said “lies solely with the perpetrators.”
He made the remarks in a letter addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council, a day after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Tehran and several other Iranian cities, killing the country’s top leader.
The official news agency IRNA reported.
Araghchi said that in a series of “aggressive, unprovoked and unjustified” attacks against Iran’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity on Saturday, the United States and Israel “deliberately” targeted the highest-ranking official of an independent UN member state.
He described the attack as a “cowardly terrorist action” and “a direct attack on the most fundamental principles of international law, including the prohibition of the use of force, the sovereign equality of states, and the inviolability and immunity of heads of state.”
Such an action creates “a precarious and unprecedented practice that would target fundamental norms of state sovereignty and civilised behavior among nations” and will cause “dangerous unforeseen problems,” he warned.
In the letter, Araghchi also highlighted Iran’s inherent and inalienable right to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity and people under the UN Charter. (NAN)
