Iran elections
It’s election day in Iran. People are heading to the polls to cast their ballots for Parliament and the Assembly of Experts. Voters are taking part in the Parliamentary election to choose 290 members of the legislative body from over 15,000 candidates. Elected members will serve for a term of four years in the Parliament. In another election which is being held simultaneously, participants are voting for 88 members of the assembly of experts, a deliberative body elected for eight years. This is the 12th Parliamentary election and the sixth voting for the Assembly of Experts since the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. More than 61 million people are eligible to vote in both elections.
'Disappointing the ill-wishers'
The Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution has cast his ballot in the country’s Parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections. Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei voted in the Tehran constituency as soon as polls opened across the nation on Friday.
Israel invasion of Rafah
The UN human rights chief has once again issued a stark warning against Israel's planned ground assault on the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council that an attack on Rafah would take the nightmare that is being inflicted on Gazans to a new dimension. He slammed the regime’s attacks and killings in Gaza as examples of Israel’s brutality and carnage. Turk stressed that there are no words to capture the horrors that are unfolding in Gaza. Rafah is the territory’s most populated area where over 1.5mn people are sheltering. They have nowhere safe to go, and many of them have already been displaced multiple times.