Symphony of Israeli attacks and prayers in the Tehran night

Tehran.- The Tehran sky lit up again last night in red and small white explosions with the red bursts of Iranian air defenses trying to shoot down Israeli drones, while prayers sounded through mosque loudspeakers and shouts of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great). A symphony of "fireworks" mixed with religious shouts that were followed by groups of neighbors on the rooftops and windows of the north of the capital, some of them with cell phones recording the small explosions of what appeared to be drones intercepted by Iranian defenses, something prohibited by the Government. It has been the eighth consecutive night that the Iranian capital of 10 million inhabitants - although many have fled the city - was the target of Israeli attacks, in an offensive that does not seem to be stopping anytime soon.

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EFE heard at least two explosions in the north as night fell and another at dawn, but above all, the red bursts of the air defenses hitting points in the sky were observed, sometimes very frequently. The Israeli Army claimed on Friday to have bombed again the headquarters of the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), an agency of the Iranian Ministry of Defense in charge of developing emerging technologies for military purposes. In the midst of all this, prayers and slogans began to sound at the beginning of the night from what seemed to be a nearby mosque, amplified by loudspeakers that echoed in the north of the capital. "Allah Akbar", "Allah Akbar" and "death America" sounded, in a call to which some neighbors responded from their windows with their own "Allah Akbar". Later, music sounded from the speakers. Some voice also shouted "death to Jameneí" timidly, a shout used over the years to show rejection of the Islamic Republic. In the north of the capital, many of the wealthy neighborhoods are practically empty, with completely vacated buildings, streets devoid of cars even in the parking lots, which gives a ghostly air to the city. In state television and many official media, only the "successful" Iranian attacks against Israel are reported, and hardly anything is said about the damage that the Persian country is suffering. The authorities have begun to put up posters with the images of civilians killed in the Israeli offensive that began early last Friday under the pretext of stopping the Iranian nuclear program by destroying its facilities for this purpose. Iranian authorities have not updated the official death toll since last Sunday, which remains at 224, a figure that, according to local reports of victims, is already much higher than that amount and which the Iranian organization HRANA, opposed to the regime and based in the U.S., raises to 639. The silence of the streets also moves to the Internet. EFE was able to verify that since Wednesday afternoon it was no longer possible to connect to pages outside the country and the VPNs that are usually used to access blocked applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram were also blocked. The NetBlocks portal, a group dedicated to monitoring international internet traffic, reported today that Iran has been off the global internet for 36 hours. Live data shows that national connectivity remains at a lower percentage than ordinary levels with only a handful of users able to connect via VPN, NetBlocks noted. The Israeli Army has attacked military infrastructures (air defense systems, ballistic missile depots...) and nuclear plants (Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow), but also senior officials of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or nuclear scientists. Iran, for its part, has attacked various military installations and has also hit civilian targets such as the Soroka hospital in Israel. Israeli authorities, on the other hand, have also been holding the dead in their territory for days at 24.