Israel warns Tehran residents to evacuate as it continues its raids

Newshour

BBC

News, Daily News

4.4 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Israel warns Tehran residents to evacuate as it continues its strikes on the Iranian capital, hitting Iran TV studios while many residents attempt to flee the capital. Also in the programme: Canada’s foreign minister on the G7 summit, and the athletics trial gripping Norway.

(Photo: Iranian flag in an empty square with images of slain senior commanders. Credit: Reuters)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks.
0:10.7	Israel and Iran have continued exchanging strikes for a fourth day. Israel has said that it now has full control of the airspace over the capital Tehran and has destroyed a third of Iran's land-based
0:21.9	missile launches. Iran has accused the Israeli military of hitting a hospital in the west of the
0:26.3	country. More than 200 are reported dead since Friday in Iran. In Israel, the figure is 24.
0:34.0	Certainly the highest profile strike of the day came shortly after Israel had warned Iranians to leave an area of central Tehran,
0:40.5	and the Israeli Defence Minister had said that Iranian's state TV was about to be hit.
0:45.6	And then this happened during live broadcasting on State TV.
0:49.9	The sound you heard, the faza of the air-haaloud of the studio... What Iran restriced access to the country for journalists, but the BBC's Persian service is still very much engaged in journalism from beyond Iran,
1:13.3	broadcasting news to Iranian audiences in Farsi.
1:16.0	Bachman Kalbasi is a reporter with BBC Persian in New York.
1:21.0	So what happened to Iranian State TV after it was struck?
1:26.3	They went back on air a few minutes later, but one of the landmarks is a glass building
1:33.5	that usually used for big presidential debates and what have you was engulfed in flame.
1:42.3	Before that, as you mentioned, the Israeli spokesperson for the military said that
1:48.6	people in parts of District 3 must leave. District 3 has over 300,000 people living in it. So it
1:56.0	seemed completely impractical for that many people to leave that quickly. But that has been one of the,
2:03.4	it was the first time since the invasion or the attack on Iran has started by Israel that they
2:08.8	told part of the population to leave. And many people in Tehran had already started leaving
2:14.1	in the couple of hours before that. The highways or pictures we have is packed,
2:20.8	cars are backed up. Many had to turn around and come back because there's a shortage of gasoline.
2:26.7	But there's still, I would say, a vast majority of people in Tehran still are living in their
2:32.5	houses and are terrified of this situation.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.