WASHINGTON (TNND) — Iranians filled the streets of Tehran and other cities overnight to celebrate the news that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been killed after a day of coordinated U.S. and Israeli attacks.
The Ayatollah’s death represented a historic shift for Iran after close to 40 years of authoritarian rule.
Cellphone services and landline phones were down across the country, which made it difficult to gauge public sentiment in the country of more than 90 million people.
Early reports say the death toll in Iran could be more than 100 people who had been killed in the first wave of strikes between the U.S. and Iran.
According to videos sent by three residents of Tehran to The New York Times, people were seen dancing and cheering after the death of the Ayatollah.
However, for Iranians who support Ayatollah Khamenei and revered him as a religious figure, the celebrations were hard watch.
The Ayatollah Khamenei personally ordered security forces use lethal force against protesters in January. Khamenei’s use of lethal force led to a massacre that human rights groups say killed at least 7,000 people, with numbers still expected to rise.
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“Khamenei went to hell,” one man shouted from his rooftop on Saturday, according to a video posted on BBC Persian.
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