TEHRAN — Iran summoned the Afghan chargé d’affaires on
Tuesday after a violent protest at its diplomatic mission in western
Afghanistan.
Tehran also
announced the closure until further notice of its Afghan missions, where other
protests had also occurred.
اضافة اعلان
On Monday, dozens
of Afghans chanting “Death to Iran” demonstrated outside the Iranian consulate
in Herat after videos spread widely over the weekend, purportedly showing
Iranians beating Afghan refugees.
Demonstrators
burned an Iranian flag and damaged surveillance cameras at the mission before
dispersing, an AFP correspondent said. They also threw stones at the compound.
On Monday, a
similar anti-Iran protest occurred in the southeastern city of Khost, and
another took place outside the Iranian embassy in Kabul.
Another
demonstration against the videos occurred near Ahmad Shah Massoud Square in
Kabul on Tuesday.
A statement on
Iran’s foreign ministry website said the embassy in Kabul had also been
targeted.
The statement,
issued Tuesday, said the ministry’s director general for South Asia summoned
Afghanistan’s chargé d’affairs in Tehran “to vigorously protest the attacks on
the Iranian embassy in Kabul and the consulate general in Herat”.
It added that the
embassy and consular sections in Afghanistan had suspended operations “in order
to obtain necessary assurances guaranteeing total security of the missions.”
Iran, which hosts
more than five million Afghan refugees, has seen a fresh influx of Afghans
since the Taliban returned to power last August.
The protests
occurred after the weekend circulation on social media of the videos claiming
to show Iranian border guards and Iranian mobs beating Afghan refugees in Iran.
It was unclear when
the images were filmed, and their authenticity could not be independently
verified.
On Sunday, Iran’s
embassy in Kabul called the images “baseless and invalid”.
Since the Taliban
seized power, Afghanistan has plunged further into economic crisis, pushing
even those without links to the former Western-backed government to scramble
for an exit.
Thousands of people
daily try to cross into neighboring Iran in search of work, or in a bid to
reach Europe in the hope of asylum.
Iran has so far not
recognized the Taliban government.
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