Tens of thousands of Iranians chanted "Death to the dictator" yesterday as hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave the keynote address to an annual mass rally of solidarity with the Palestinians.
A group of Iranian hardliners have attacked a reformist former president while he was marching with opposition supporters at an anti-government rally in Tehran.
A reformist Website cites witnesses as saying the attackers pushed ex-President Mohammad Khatami to the ground. It says opposition activists rescued him and quickly repelled the assailants.
The opposition supporters defied a heavy security presence and dire warnings from regime officials about the consequences of any effort to try to hijack the Quds (Jerusalem) Day event to mount the protest, the first against Ahmadinejad's hotly disputed June re-election in two months.
Chanting slogans in support of the hardliner's main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the protesters gathered in several places in the city centre for the traditional march to Tehran University where the speeches were delivered, witnesses said.
Hardline supporters of the regime among the more than 100,000 people who joined the rally, mounted counter-demonstrations leading to repeated scuffles between the two sides, witnesses said.
Mousavi was forced to abandon his plans to take part in the rally after an angry crowd of hardliners attacked his car, the official IRNA news agency said,
Former president Mohammad Khatami, a key supporter of the opposition leader whose 1997 to 2005 term of office saw a thaw in relations with the West, was also assaulted by hardliners before being rescued by riot police, a reformist website Parlemennews.ir reported.
"During the scuffle, his turban fell off and they wanted to beat him but supporters resisted them and the riot police promptly intervened," the website said.
Khatami's brother Mohammad Reza Khatami said the former president was "not hurt".
"Some people shouted slogans against him," the brother told AFP. "He is home now. He is not hurt and he is fine."
Despite a threat by the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to crush any attempt to mount protests during the setpiece event, which was the brainchild of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, witnesses reported no police action during the event.
But as demonstrators headed away from the university district after the main speeches, they clashed with both riot police and hardliners in plain clothes, they said.
Riot police, armed with batons, beat protesters who were pelting them with stones at Tehran's key Haft-e Tir Square, the witnesses said.
In the same square, demonstrators clashed with plainclothes militiamen, they added.
"The plaincothesmen on motorcycles rode into the crowd of opposition supporters as they were returning from the rally, detained several of them and beat them with batons," one witness told AFP.
The opposition supporters continued to chant "Death to dictator" and "Allahu Akbar" as they were being beaten, the witness added.
There were also reports of clashes at Quds Day events in other major cities, as the unrest over the presidential election flared up again for the first time since July 19 in a sign of the seriousness of the challenge facing the regime.
Members of Iran's Basij Islamic militia attacked and detained demonstrators in both Tabriz in the northwest and in Isfahan south of the capital, the Mowjcamp.com opposition website said.
In his address to the crowds, which was broadcast live on state radio, Ahmadinejad renewed his comments about Israel and the Holocaust that sparked an international outcry in the past.
The hardline president again said that the mass extermination of Jews during World War II was a "myth" and said Israel was on its way to collapse.
"They (Western powers) launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews," he said to chants of "Death to Israel" from supporters among the crowd.
"The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie... a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust.
"This regime's days are numbered and it is on its way to collapse. This regime is dying."
Similar comments made by Ahmadinejad shortly after his first election as president in 2005 sparked an international outcry and prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to describe Iran as an "existential threat" to the Jewish state.
Then Ahmadinejad said Israel was "doomed to be wiped off the map."