8 min ago
Tehran may have to use underground parking lots in the absence of bomb shelters, city official says
From CNN’s Nadeen Ebrahim
Iran’s capital Tehran doesn’t have bomb shelters, so the city must make use of tunnels, and basements, Chairman of Tehran’s City Council, Mehdi Chamran, told reporters.
“Unfortunately, we in Tehran and in our other cities do not have shelters,” Chamran said Sunday. “We must work on having shelters now; we can use the plans we had before.”
Chamran said that casualty figures in Israel are lower as the country has many bomb shelters and regular drills for incoming attacks.
“In Tehran there weren’t any shelters, people went into basements,” he said, adding that the metro can be used as a shelter “in extreme crisis” but that “we would need to shut the system down.”
“We could prepare underground parking lots as well, similar to when Saddam bombed us,” Chamran said, referring to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the war of the 1980s.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in a video address Saturday that Israel will “strike every site and every target of the Ayatollah’s regime.” Iran has threatened to intensify its attacks if Israel continues hostilities.