Israel issued evacuation warning to residents in Tehran ahead of airstrikes

By Anjali Sharma

WASHINGTON – Israel on Tuesday issued evacuation warning to a municipal district in Tehran, called its residents to urgently leave ahead of Israeli airstrikes, as per media reports.

Avichay Adraee, a spokesman for the Israeli military in a post on Persian and Arabic on social media platform X, called residents of District C, located in the northeastern part of the city, to evacuate.

“In the coming hours, the Israeli army will operate in this area, as it has over recent days in other parts of Tehran, to strike military infrastructure belonging to the Iranian regime,” Adraee said.

“Your presence in this area endangers your life,” he said. “For your safety and security, we urge you to immediately evacuate.”

Several important state institutions, government offices, and semi-governmental organizations, as well as communication and intelligence facilities are located in District C, media reported.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Israeli warplanes have struck trucks containing weapons and surface-to-air missile launchers, advancing from western Iran toward Tehran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz visited the Tel Nof airbase in the south of the country. During the visit, Netanyahu said that the Israeli Air Force “controls the skies over Tehran.”

He claimed: “We are on our way to achieving our two main objectives: eliminating the nuclear threat and eliminating the missile threat.”

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said that Israel seeks to expand the war to other countries in the West Asia region.

He made the remarks at a weekly press conference while condemning the ongoing Israeli “aggression” against Iran, which has started since early Friday.

Baghaei said, “We have no doubt that Israel wishes to fan the flames of the war as much as it can and spread the flames to other countries and players in the region,” added that Israel had attacked residential buildings in Iran and a children’s hospital in Tehran.

He stressed that Iran’s nuclear programme was merely a pretext for Israel as no evidence was available indicating a diversion from the “peaceful path” in Iran’s nuclear programme.