Israel hit key Iranian targets in a fresh series of devastating airstrikes Monday, attacking the headquarters of the country’s elite military police force and blowing off the front of its most notorious, brutal prison.
The most intense bombing yet of government sites around Tehran came a day after the US joined Israel’s war on thwarting the Islamic Republic from being able to build nuclear bombs.
“The Iranian dictator will be punished with full force for attacking the Israeli home front,” Israel’s Defense Ministry said of the latest attacks.
Shocking security footage shows one missile strike blasting open the doors of Evin Prison, where the Islamic Republic held its opponents and critics in brutal conditions, with public hangings.
Teh strike allowed an unknown number of those political prisoners to flee, according to Iran International, an outlet that opposes Tehran’s leadership.
“Viva la libertad!” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote alongside video of the doors being blown clean off their hinges.
“We warned Iran time and again: stop targeting civilians! They continued, including this morning,” he wrote.
Read the latest on the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities:
Iran’s regime confirmed the strike on the prison and said sections had been damaged.
“In the latest attack by the Zionist regime on Tehran, projectiles unfortunately struck Evin prison, causing damage to parts of the facility,” the pro-government Mizan Online outlet reported.
The heavily fortified center in Iran’s capital is where the Mullahs have kept thousands of political prisoners, journalists, academics and human rights activists locked up since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
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Built in 1971 under the previous regime of the Shah in the hills of northern Tehran, the prison has been the site of numerous atrocities over the past 50 years.
In 1988, thousands of political prisoners were executed on the orders of the Ayatollah following cursory trials, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.
The prison was just one target as more than 100 munitions were dropped on Tehran in just two hours, Israel’s military claims.
Further Israeli strikes on Tehran have hit the headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the country’s elite military force, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman said.
Many IRGC soldiers were killed in the strikes, the IDF claims.
Another strike hit a clock in Palestine Square in Tehran, which symbolically counted down to the “destruction of Israel” and was installed by the regime in 2017, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
The clock counts down until 2040, the year by which the Islamist regime claims Israel will collapse.
“The IDF is currently striking with unprecedented force regime targets and governmental repression bodies in the heart of Tehran, including the Basij headquarters, the Evin Prison for political prisoners and regime opponents, the ‘Destruction of Israel’ clock in Palestine Square, the internal security headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideology headquarters, and other regime targets,” Katz said in a statement.
Further strikes in Iran hit the access roads to the Fordow nuclear facility, one of three sites in Iran hit during US air strikes over the weekend.
The strikes were intended to “disrupt” accessibility to the underground nuclear enrichment center, the IDF claimed.
