Tehran (AFP) – Large crowds took to the streets in the capitals of Iran, Iraq and Yemen on Friday for the annual show of support for Palestinians and denunciation of Israel.
Quds (Jerusalem) Day commemorations were launched in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, which has made support for the Palestinian cause a cornerstone of its foreign policy.
The marches, which call for Jerusalem to be returned to the Palestinians, are traditionally held on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Crowds gathered in the streets of Tehran after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Iranian people to protest against "the enemies' tricks".
Demonstrators waved Iranian and Palestinian flags, as well as those of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Many held placards reading "Death to America" and "Death to Israel", and chanted anti-US and anti-Israel slogans, an AFP journalist reported.
"I feel in the near future Gaza will be victorious and Israel, as history dictates, will face collapse and the flag of Islam's might will be hoisted in Gaza," Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, former commander of the army's ground forces, told AFP.
Keffiyeh-wearing 22-year-old student Fatemeh Mohebbi said she attended the event to "condemn the crimes that are happening".
Similar rallies were held across the country, state TV images showed.
"Your march on Quds Day will nullify all the enemies' tricks and false words," Khamenei said in a video message on Thursday.
The authorities had called on Iranians to come out in force for the demonstrations against arch foe Israel.
Palestinian militant group Hamas -- part of Iran's so-called Axis of Resistance against Israel and the United States -- said: "Jerusalem will remain at the heart of our battle against the occupation.
"The enemy will not succeed in breaking the will of our people, who are making sacrifices for their Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa," added the group, which has been at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
Thousands also gathered in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, held by the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, in demonstrations described by the rebels' TV channel as "the largest in the Arab and Islamic world".
Demonstrations were also held in several other cities, coming shortly after dawn air strikes by the United States hit six Yemeni provinces, including Sanaa, according to Huthi-affiliated media.
In the Iraqi capital, several hundred supporters of pro-Iran armed groups marched, waving flags in the colours of their factions, as well as Palestinian and Lebanese flags.
"The Iraqi Islamic Resistance tells Palestine and its people that its right to land and its right to resistance is a natural right," a leader of one of the armed groups, Qadhim al-Fartoussi, told the crowd.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem was due to give a speech that was called off after the cancellation of a demonstration scheduled to be held metres (yards) from a site struck by Israel on Friday.
Demonstrators had gathered on Thursday at the Burj al-Barajneh camp for Palestinian refugees south of Beirut, holding Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, as well as pictures of Qassem's predecessor Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike last September.