IRGC denies assassination targeting navy commander

A second blast in southern Iran hit a four-unit residential building in Ahvaz on Saturday, killing four people, local media reported.

Babak Rabiei, head of the Ahvaz Fire and Safety Services, told ISNA the incident occurred in the Kianshahr neighborhood and killed four members of one family — a father, mother and their two children.

Rabiei said two people, a three-year-old child and a woman, were pulled alive from under the rubble.

An explosion damaged a residential building in Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday afternoon, Iranian media reported, with videos showing heavy damage to several floors.

Footage shows a car being hurled aside by the force of the blast. Guards-linked Tasnim denied reports that Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the IRGC Navy, had been killed in the blast.

A group of Iranians living in Australia marched in support of national uprising and exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi in the city of Brisbane, Videos received by Iran International on Saturday show.

Participants were seen chanting slogans including “this is the final battle, Pahlavi will return” and “death to Khamenei.”

Iran's Army Cheif Amir Hatami said Iran’s armed forces are at a high level of defensive and military readiness and are closely monitoring enemy movements across the region.

Awareness of hostile intentions, Hatami said, has kept Iran’s forces with their “finger on the trigger,” signaling readiness to respond to any escalation.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian said at a ceremony at the burial site of Ruhollah Khomeini that in ordinary social protests people do not take up guns, kill security forces, or set ambulances and markets on fire, adding that the issue went beyond social protest and was aimed at tearing society apart.

"In these events Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Europeans all sought to incite unrest, create division and provide support, drawing some innocent people into the streets," he said on Saturday.