TEHRAN (AFP)
Iranian students have offered rewards totaling a million dollars for the "execution" of three Israeli military leaders over the deadly strikes on Gaza, the student news agency ISNA reported on Monday.
The group is also encouraging Iranians to donate their kidneys to increase the bounties on the heads of Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Mossad spy agency director Meir Dagan and military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.
The rewards were announced by the Justice Seeking Students Group on Sunday at a ceremony in Tehran entitled "setting the bounty for the revolutionary execution of the designers of state terrorism," ISNA said.
The bounty for Barak is set at 400,000 dollars while those for Dagan and Yadlin are 300,000 each, the report said. It is not clear where the money is coming from.
"These sums will be given to any person or their families who could punish these individuals in any part of the world," the organizers of the event announced.
The move comes after the assassination of Hezbollah chief Imad Mughniah in a car bomb in the Syrian capital Damascus. The Shiite group was quick to blame Israel for the assassination, an accusation Israel denied.
Pictures taken at the ceremony showed a banner bearing pictures of the three Israelis against the backdrop of an Israeli flag, with rifle sights stenciled onto the foreheads of the trio.
"Israel must be wiped off the map," read a quote from Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini printed on the top of the banner.
The event in Tehran was concluded by organizers distributing application forms for volunteers to donate kidneys to increase the bounties for the three men.
"This is one of the very good moves that show we are ready to sacrifice our own health to support Palestinians and annihilate the eads of the Zionist regime," one of the event's organizers, Forouz Rajaifar, was quoted as saying.
Iranian officials, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have strongly condemned the Israeli strikes and called on the Muslim world and international organizations to act.
At least 132 Palestinians, including several dozen children, have died in Israeli strikes since late February. Four Israeli soldiers and one civilian have died over the same period.
The Islamic republic has a longstanding policy of non-recognition of Israel but its rhetoric against the Jewish state has sharpened during the presidency of Ahmadinejad.
Iran insists its position is in no way anti-Semitic but anti-Zionist, pointing to the continued existence in the country of the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel. |
