News - Middle East: Iran has roundly denounced the assassination of Hezbollah’s spokesman Mohammad Afif in an Israeli strike targeting a building in central Beirut, saying he served as the ‘sonorous voice’ of the Lebanese nation.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei honored Afif as a notable figure in the mission to raise awareness and enlighten the world public opinion about the injustice and violations of the usurping and apartheid Zionist regime.

He sought till the last moment of his life to reverberate the oppression of Lebanese and Palestinian peoples by the Israeli regime around the world, Baghaei stressed.

The Iranian diplomat also noted that more than 200 journalists and media workers have been killed at the hands of Israeli forces over the past year, terming the assassinations as part of the Zionist regime’s orchestrated campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

These killings are meant to intimidate media outlets, and force them to stop reporting on the Israeli regime’s atrocities, Baghaei pointed out.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman underscored that the international humanitarian law, particularly the 1949 Geneva Conventions, prohibits attacks against journalists and media professionals, and condemned the assassination of Afif and other journalists in Lebanon and Gaza as a clear example of war crime.

Baghaei demanded the United Nations and the International Court of Justice hold Israeli officials accountable for committing such brutalities.

He expressed assurances that the blood of Afif, just like that of renowned Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as well as other fallen Lebanese and Palestinian media workers, will further discredit Israel and its allies and sponsors, and will cement the resolve of the Lebanese and Palestinian nations to continue their legitimate resistance against Israel’s occupation and apartheid.

Afif was a longtime media adviser to late Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air attack on September 27.

He managed the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar television station for several years before taking over the resistance movement’s media office.

 Source: Press TV