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NextImg:Iran claims 71 killed in Israeli strike on Evin Prison last week

Israel’s attack on the Evin Prison in Iran’s capital, Tehran, on June 23 killed 71 people, Iranian judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on Sunday.

At the end of an air war with Iran, Israel struck Tehran’s most notorious jail for political prisoners, in what was seen as a demonstration that it was expanding its targets beyond military and nuclear sites to aim at symbols of Iran’s ruling system.

“In the attack on Evin prison, 71 people were martyred, including administrative staff, youth doing their military service, detainees, family members of detainees who were visiting them, and neighbors who lived in the prison’s vicinity,” Jahangir said in remarks carried on the judiciary’s news outlet Mizan.

The figures and details could not be confirmed.

Jahangir had previously said that part of Evin prison’s administrative building had been damaged in the attack, and people were killed and injured. The judiciary added that the remaining detainees had been transferred to other prisons in Tehran province.

Mizan has confirmed that the top prosecutor at the prison was killed in the strike.

Ali Ghanaatkar’s prosecution of dissidents, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, led to widespread criticism by human rights groups.

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Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week that the airstrike hit the gate of the prison, a large and heavily fortified complex where Iran has incarcerated political prisoners, journalists, academics, human rights activists, foreign nationals, and others.

The bombing drew condemnation from the UN human rights office and France.

“Evin prison is not a military objective, and targeting it constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” UN human rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, without naming Israel.

He said that his office had received reports of fires inside the facility and an unspecified number of injuries.

Illustrative: A 2008 photo of Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran, where a number of foreigners and dual nationals have been detained over the years. (CC BY-SA 2.0 Ehsan Iran/Wikipedia)

Evin prison holds a number of foreign nationals, including two French citizens detained for three years.

“The strike targeting Evin prison in Tehran put our citizens Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris in danger. It is unacceptable,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on social media X after the attack.

Overall, Iran is believed to hold around 20 European nationals in what some Western governments describe as a strategy of hostage-taking aimed at extracting concessions from the West.

Israel began an air campaign against Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure on June 13.

Iran responded to the Israeli attacks with near-daily barrages of missiles at cities, killing 28 people and wounding thousands, according to health officials and hospitals. Some of the missiles hit apartment buildings, a university, and a hospital, causing heavy damage.

The scene of an Iranian ballistic missile impact at an apartment building in Beersheba, days after the attack on June 28. 2025 (Courtesy of Elior Cohen)

Israel said its sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites, and ballistic missile program was necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from realizing its declared plan to destroy the Jewish state.

Over the course of the campaign, the list of targets widened, encompassing state television and the Iranian domestic security forces.

After the US also bombed key Iranian nuclear sites last week, Washington brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.