TEHRAN, 20 May 2004 — Demonstrators against “US and British crimes in Iraq” hurled petrol bombs yesterday at the wall surrounding the British Embassy in Tehran during a mass protest in the Iranian capital.
A home-made grenade landed in the embassy garden and exploded, while Molotov cocktails burst against cement blocks placed in front of the building, before security forces charged the protesters with clubs.
In London, the Foreign Office said windows had been broken and the visa section of the embassy had been closed.
A spokesman said that an estimated 500 demonstrators had massed outside the building, and that two Molotov cocktails had been thrown, neither of which ignited a fire.
“No one has been hurt, and basically there has been no damage apart from a couple of windows broken” during the demonstration, the second such one in less than a week, the spokesman said.
“We have closed the visa section, which is the bit of the embassy that has been open to the public,” he said, adding that diplomats were still “continuing their business inside”.
Several hundred young Islamists had gathered outside the embassy as some 100,000 people rallied in the vast Inquilab (Revolution) Square at the call of the authorities to demonstrate against the profanation of places of worship in Iraq blamed on US-led coalition forces.
They also burned US and British flags and hurled them at the embassy, but were prevented by police from crossing the road to get nearer to the mission.
Some demonstrators and a number of photographers were arrested.
On Sunday, several hundred students threw rocks at the embassy and tried to storm the building in a protest over the US-led occupation of Iraq, but were turned back by riot police.
The United States has no embassy in Tehran, having broken off diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic in 1980, and demonstrators tend to target Washington’s closest ally.
Earlier tens of thousands marched through Tehran toward the central square, some three kilometers from the embassy, burning US, British and Israeli flags and screamed “Death to America, Death to Israel”.
Iranian leaders had called for the demonstrations in Tehran and the cities of Qom, south of the capital, and Mashhad in the northeast.
For several days the authorities have denounced actions by US forces against the militia of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr, in particular in the cities of Najaf and Karbala.
But they have refrained from voicing support for Sadr in his rebellion against the US-led coalition occupying Iraq.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sunday that “Muslims cannot tolerate the insolent attacks by US soldiers against the holy places, and these crimes can only be condemned in the eyes of the Islamic world and the Iranian people.”
He also said the prisoner abuse scandal at the US-run Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad represented “a shameful stain which cannot be easily wiped clean” by the Americans.
