Anti-Saudi protests were held in Iran Friday against Riyadh’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric and after Tehran accused its regional rival of bombing its Yemen embassy.
A week-long diplomatic crisis between the Middle East’s leading Sunni and Shiite Muslim powers has raised fears of heightened sectarian tensions across the region.
Around 1,000 protesters marched through Tehran Friday chanting “death to Al-Saud” — Riyadh’s ruling family, according to an AFP photographer.
Others shouted “death to America” and “death to Israel”, frequent rallying cries at demonstrations in Iran.
Some carried placards with the picture of Nimr al-Nimr, the Shiite cleric and activist executed in Saudi Arabia last week, whose death unleashed a wave of anger across the Shiite world.
Relations between the longtime adversaries hit a fresh low Thursday as Iran accused Saudi warplanes of deliberately targeting its embassy in Sanaa in raids that it said had damaged the property and wounded staff members.