TEHRAN: Retired Iranian labourer Mehdi Jokar, 67, did not give a second thought to handing over a third of his monthly pension to those wounded and made homeless by Israel’s offensive against Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas.

“I did nothing important, our Muslim brothers in Lebanon have given their blood,” he said at a gathering in a Tehran mosque on Tuesday, where some 200 people were milling round tents making donations for Lebanon and the Palestinians.

Such donation centres, run by a government foundation, were set up across the Islamic Republic for a heavily-publicised one-day collection drive.

Israel has been fighting Hezbollah since July 12, in response to the seizure of two of its soldiers in a cross-border raid. The conflict’s casualties have mainly been Lebanese civilians.

Iran’s state television broadcast images of Iranians queuing up in various parts of the country to slip banknotes into the blue and yellow collection boxes.

“I have seen a woman donating her bracelet worth ten million rials ($1,100)... that was so nice,” Mohammad Pazand, an official at Iran’s Charity Committee, told Reuters.—Reuters