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'Pursue and kill': Iran Guards vow to eliminate 'child-killing' Netanyahu
The Iranian Guards called Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu a “child-killing criminal” and vowed to kill him with full force.
Amid rumours of his assassination, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Sunday vowed to “pursue and kill” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who they described as a “child-killing criminal”.
“The unknown fate of the Zionist criminal prime minister and the possibility of his death or his escape, along with his family, from the occupied territories reveal a crisis and the faltering situation of the Zionists,” the IRGC said in a statement, Iranian state media reported.
“If this child-killing criminal is alive, we will continue to pursue and kill him with full force,”the Guards added.
The threat comes just hours after the Israeli PM's office dismissed reports of Netanyahu's assassination and said that the premier is fine.
Several unverified claims and reports were doing the rounds on social media after a video posted on Netanyahu's X handle seemingly showed the Israeli PM with six fingers, sparking rumours of the footage being manipulated or AI-generated.
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Speculations were also rife over the PM's son, Yair Netanyahu, and his X handle, as users claimed that he hadn't posted anything since March 9 due to a 'family tragedy'.
However, X's AI chatbot, Grok, debunked all these claims and rumours. It clarified that the video posted on Netanyahu's X account was not manipulated. Rather, it was just a visual illusion, which made it seem like he had six fingers.
It also fact-checked rumours based on a certain deleted post on the Israeli PMO's X handle.
When asked about the claims surrounding the phrase "Netanyahu has been assassinated", a spokesperson from the Israeli PM's office said that these are "fake news" and assured that he is "fine".
Israel-Iran war
Israel and Iran have been at loggerheads since time immemorial, i.e., from the time of the unprecedented attack on Jerusalem by militant outfit Hamas, an Iranian proxy, on October 7, 2023.
The two sides have clashed on and off more so than ever since then. However, tensions went to another level last year when Israel and Iran engaged in a 12-day war, with US involvement.
Amid ongoing talks between Iran and the US over Tehran's nuclear programme came the joint US-Israeli strikes, resulting in the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In retaliation, Iran did not just launch strikes against Israel and the US's bases in the region, it also began striking their allies and other related countries in the Middle East.
The conflict quickly snowballed into a full-blown war across the region.
