People in the Indian capital of New Delhi are holding demonstrations near the US Embassy on Tuesday to protest the killing of Iran’s military commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike on 3 January.
The protesters chanted slogans against the US president, with some placards reading "Trump is a war criminal", other banners featured photos of Soleimani and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Protests in Delhi over Qassem Soleimani's assassination pic.twitter.com/02wBAsgKPT
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) January 7, 2020
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) January 7, 2020
Some demonstrators chanted such slogans as "America, Israel shameless", and "Donald Trump Down, Down", while also raising red flags, symbolising Soleimani's martyrdom.
Hundreds of Muslims are holding a massive protest near the American embassy in New Delhi against the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on 3 January in Iraq pic.twitter.com/CNESDJsGfO
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) January 7, 2020
Shia Muslim leader Kalbe Jawad, who was leading the protest, told Sputnik that the Indian government should extend its full support to Iran amid escalating tensions with the United States.
The protests are not just limited to New Delhi as there have been rallies in India’s Kashmir and Pakistan’s Karachi as well. Anti-US slogans dominated demonstrations as hundreds of people in the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir turned out to protest against the assassination.
Iran's foreign minister Javad Zarif has said that by ordering the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the "rogue regime" in Washington has unleashed worldwide fury against the US.
What the US has accomplished in its terrorist assassination of anti-ISIS heroes is to unleash global anti-US fury and a worldwide rancor—on a scale not seen in recent memory.
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 6, 2020
End of malign U.S. presence in West Asia has begun. pic.twitter.com/Hl1p0LttX2
Zarif's tweet was accompanied by photos of anti-US protest rallies sweeping several countries in the region, as people in Pakistan's Karachi and India's Kashmir took to the streets to condemn Washington’s assassination of General Soleimani.
On Monday, 6 January, millions of Iranians packed the streets of Tehran to pay homage to General Soleimani, as a sea of mourners descended on the iconic Enqelab Square.
The drone strike that killed Soleimani was the culmination of a series of incidents which began on 27 December, when a US military base in Kirkuk, Iraq was hit by rockets launched by unidentified forces, killing a US civilian contractor and injuring several US troops.
