Iran: alarm raised over ‘bloody’ crackdown on protesters in Kurdistan
Weronika Strzyżyńska and Haroon Janjua -TODAY- THE GUARDIAN
Rights groups have sounded the alarm over an intensifying crackdown by Iranian security forces against protesters in the western province of Kurdistan, as Tehran summoned the British ambassador in response to UK sanctions against the morality police.
Security forces in the provincial capital Sanandaj have used firearms and fired teargas “indiscriminately”, including into people’s homes, Amnesty International reported.
A female protester in the city told the Guardian that a “massacre” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was taking place. “They have shut down the city and are slaughtering people inside with guns and bombs just because they are chanting for freedom,” she said.
Related: ‘The fire of our anger is still burning’: protesters in Iran speak out
Despite the authorities’ disruption of internet, videos showing apparent gunfire in Sanandaj have been posted online by the Norway-based human rights group Hengaw.
Hengaw said Iranian war planes had arrived at the city’s airport overnight and buses carrying special forces were on their way to the city from elsewhere in Iran.
On Monday – as protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody entered their fourth week – Britain said it was imposing sanctions against the “morality police in its entirety”, as well as against Iran’s police commander and the head of the Basij militia, linked to the Revolutionary Guards.
The Iranian government responded by summoning the British ambassador to Iran, Simon Shercliff, to Tehran later the same day. Iran described the sanctions as “baseless” and accused the UK of interfering in its internal affairs.
The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.
The New-York based Center for Human Rights in Iran said there was a risk of a similar situation in Sistan and Baluchistan province, in the south-east, where activists say more than 90 people have been killed since 30 September.
“The ruthless killings of civilians by security forces in Kurdistan province, on the heels of the massacre in Sistan and Baluchistan province, are likely preludes to severe state violence to come,” its director, Hadi Ghaemi, told Agence France-Presse.
In a new development on Monday, workers from Iran’s oil industry joined the demonstrations.
Footage posted on Twitter showed workers blocking the road to the Bushehr petrochemical plant in Assaluyeh, on the Gulf, and chanting “death to the dictator”. A regional official said the workers were protesting over wages and not the death of Mahsa Amini.
“The situation in Assaluyeh is really alarming,” the 23-year-old wife of an oil worker told the Guardian. “I am concerned about the safety of my husband. There is no way to communicate and reach him.”
The woman, who said she had previously burned her hijab in protest over Amini’s death, added: “We will throw the regime out through our continued struggle this time.”
Iran has the fourth largest reserves of crude oil in the world and the industry is key to its economy. Strikes of oil workers were a major factor in the success of the 1979 revolution.
“If these unrests continue and expand, especially if the energy sector joins the protests, the regime will irreversibly be in trouble,” Fatemeh Aman, senior fellow at the Washington based Middle East Institute, said from Erbil. “I don’t know if at this point there is a will within the establishment to reconcile, but even if there is, bloody crackdowns on ethnic minorities [like in Sanandaj] will make any reconciliation almost certainly impossible.”
The authorities have pinned the blame for the unrest and violence on a wide array of actors including armed Kurdish dissidents, American and Israeli agents, as well as “traitorous Iranians abroad”. No evidence of foreign involvement has been provided.
France’s foreign affairs minister, Catherine Colonna, said five French citizens had been detained by Iranian authorities, after a video of a French couple confessing to “spying” was aired in Iran.
A week prior, France urged its citizens to leave Iran saying they were at risk of arbitrary detentions.
Prompted by the repressions of protesters, EU is set to join the US, Britain, and Canada in imposing sanctions of Iranian security forces.
“The EU agreed yesterday the technical aspects of a sanctions package that will target those behind the repression,” Colonna said on Tuesday.
Weronika Strzyżyńska and Haroon Janjua -TODAY- THE GUARDIAN
Rights groups have sounded the alarm over an intensifying crackdown by Iranian security forces against protesters in the western province of Kurdistan, as Tehran summoned the British ambassador in response to UK sanctions against the morality police.
Security forces in the provincial capital Sanandaj have used firearms and fired teargas “indiscriminately”, including into people’s homes, Amnesty International reported.
A female protester in the city told the Guardian that a “massacre” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was taking place. “They have shut down the city and are slaughtering people inside with guns and bombs just because they are chanting for freedom,” she said.
Related: ‘The fire of our anger is still burning’: protesters in Iran speak out
Despite the authorities’ disruption of internet, videos showing apparent gunfire in Sanandaj have been posted online by the Norway-based human rights group Hengaw.
Hengaw said Iranian war planes had arrived at the city’s airport overnight and buses carrying special forces were on their way to the city from elsewhere in Iran.
On Monday – as protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody entered their fourth week – Britain said it was imposing sanctions against the “morality police in its entirety”, as well as against Iran’s police commander and the head of the Basij militia, linked to the Revolutionary Guards.
The Iranian government responded by summoning the British ambassador to Iran, Simon Shercliff, to Tehran later the same day. Iran described the sanctions as “baseless” and accused the UK of interfering in its internal affairs.
The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.
Photograph: IRANWIRE/Reuters© Provided by The Guardian
Protests have been especially intense in Sanandaj in Kurdistan, Amini’s home region, where rights groups fear heavy casualties.
Protests have been especially intense in Sanandaj in Kurdistan, Amini’s home region, where rights groups fear heavy casualties.
Related video: London rally urges UK gov't to back Iranian protestsDuration 0:53
The New-York based Center for Human Rights in Iran said there was a risk of a similar situation in Sistan and Baluchistan province, in the south-east, where activists say more than 90 people have been killed since 30 September.
“The ruthless killings of civilians by security forces in Kurdistan province, on the heels of the massacre in Sistan and Baluchistan province, are likely preludes to severe state violence to come,” its director, Hadi Ghaemi, told Agence France-Presse.
In a new development on Monday, workers from Iran’s oil industry joined the demonstrations.
Footage posted on Twitter showed workers blocking the road to the Bushehr petrochemical plant in Assaluyeh, on the Gulf, and chanting “death to the dictator”. A regional official said the workers were protesting over wages and not the death of Mahsa Amini.
“The situation in Assaluyeh is really alarming,” the 23-year-old wife of an oil worker told the Guardian. “I am concerned about the safety of my husband. There is no way to communicate and reach him.”
The woman, who said she had previously burned her hijab in protest over Amini’s death, added: “We will throw the regime out through our continued struggle this time.”
Iran has the fourth largest reserves of crude oil in the world and the industry is key to its economy. Strikes of oil workers were a major factor in the success of the 1979 revolution.
“If these unrests continue and expand, especially if the energy sector joins the protests, the regime will irreversibly be in trouble,” Fatemeh Aman, senior fellow at the Washington based Middle East Institute, said from Erbil. “I don’t know if at this point there is a will within the establishment to reconcile, but even if there is, bloody crackdowns on ethnic minorities [like in Sanandaj] will make any reconciliation almost certainly impossible.”
The authorities have pinned the blame for the unrest and violence on a wide array of actors including armed Kurdish dissidents, American and Israeli agents, as well as “traitorous Iranians abroad”. No evidence of foreign involvement has been provided.
France’s foreign affairs minister, Catherine Colonna, said five French citizens had been detained by Iranian authorities, after a video of a French couple confessing to “spying” was aired in Iran.
A week prior, France urged its citizens to leave Iran saying they were at risk of arbitrary detentions.
Prompted by the repressions of protesters, EU is set to join the US, Britain, and Canada in imposing sanctions of Iranian security forces.
“The EU agreed yesterday the technical aspects of a sanctions package that will target those behind the repression,” Colonna said on Tuesday.
By JON GAMBRELL
TODAY
This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran intensified its crackdown Tuesday on Kurdish areas in the country’s west amid protests sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman detained by the morality police as oil workers demonstrated at a key refinery, activists said.
Riot police fired into residential neighborhoods in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as Amnesty International and the White House’s national security adviser criticized the violence targeting demonstrators angered by the death of Mahsa Amini.
Meanwhile, some oil workers Monday joined the protests at two key refinery complexes, for the first time linking an industry key to Iran’s theocracy to the unrest. Workers claimed another protest Tuesday in the crucial oil city of Abadan, with others calling for protests on Wednesday as well.
Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating after she was detained for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
From the capital, Tehran, videos emerged showing students at two universities demonstrating and chanting. Some women and girls have marched through the streets without headscarves as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.
“There is just so much anger and frustration in the country that it’s hard to imagine that the current generation of protesters in Iran would be cowed just by the system resorting to its traditional iron fist and trying to put down protests,” said Ali Vaez, an analyst who covers Iran for the International Crisis Group.
Videos posted online by a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights showed darkened streets with apparent gunfire going off and a bonfire burning in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tehran.
Another showed riot police carrying shotguns moving in formation with a vehicle, apparently firing at homes.
A video posted later Tuesday purportedly showed a massive bullet hole inside the home of one Sanandaj resident, a hole that Hengaw alleged came from a heavy .50-caliber machine gun — the type often mounted on armored vehicles. Another video purportedly showed security forces randomly firing in the air while arresting someone there on Monday.
This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran intensified its crackdown Tuesday on Kurdish areas in the country’s west amid protests sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman detained by the morality police as oil workers demonstrated at a key refinery, activists said.
Riot police fired into residential neighborhoods in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as Amnesty International and the White House’s national security adviser criticized the violence targeting demonstrators angered by the death of Mahsa Amini.
Meanwhile, some oil workers Monday joined the protests at two key refinery complexes, for the first time linking an industry key to Iran’s theocracy to the unrest. Workers claimed another protest Tuesday in the crucial oil city of Abadan, with others calling for protests on Wednesday as well.
Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating after she was detained for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
From the capital, Tehran, videos emerged showing students at two universities demonstrating and chanting. Some women and girls have marched through the streets without headscarves as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.
“There is just so much anger and frustration in the country that it’s hard to imagine that the current generation of protesters in Iran would be cowed just by the system resorting to its traditional iron fist and trying to put down protests,” said Ali Vaez, an analyst who covers Iran for the International Crisis Group.
Videos posted online by a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights showed darkened streets with apparent gunfire going off and a bonfire burning in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tehran.
Another showed riot police carrying shotguns moving in formation with a vehicle, apparently firing at homes.
A video posted later Tuesday purportedly showed a massive bullet hole inside the home of one Sanandaj resident, a hole that Hengaw alleged came from a heavy .50-caliber machine gun — the type often mounted on armored vehicles. Another video purportedly showed security forces randomly firing in the air while arresting someone there on Monday.
Videos later Tuesday showed protesters throwing stones and wielding clubs in the city as they confronted security forces, who fired tear gas into the crowd. Hengaw reported a “fierce conflict” there Tuesday night, as well as in the nearby cities of Baneh and Saqqez, Amini’s hometown.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran posted another video showing what it described as a phalanx of motorcycle-riding security forces moving through Sanandaj.
“They reportedly broke the windows of hundreds of cars in the Baharan neighborhood,” the center said.
Amini was Kurdish and her death has been felt particularly in Iran’s Kurdish region, where demonstrations began Sept. 17 at her funeral there after her death the day before.
Amnesty International criticized Iranian security forces for “using firearms and firing tear gas indiscriminately, including into people’s homes.” It urged the world to pressure Iran to end the crackdown as Tehran continues to disrupt internet and mobile phone networks “to hide their crimes.”
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the renewed crackdown in Sanandaj. However, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador over the United Kingdom sanctioning members of the country’s morality police and security officials due to the crackdown.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the sanctions “arbitrary and baseless,” even while threatening to potentially take countermeasures against London.
Jake Sullivan, U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, similarly noted that “the world is watching what is happening in Iran.”
“These protestors are Iranian citizens, led by women and girls, demanding dignity and basic rights,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter. “We stand with them, and we will hold responsible those using violence in a vain effort to silence their voices.”
On Monday, workers held demonstrations in Abadan and Asaluyeh, a key point for Iran’s massive offshore natural gas field in the Persian Gulf it shares with Qatar.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency on Tuesday claimed the Asaluyeh demonstration was a strike over wages. Videos of the protests included workers chanting: “This is the bloody year Seyyed Ali will be overthrown,” referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei without his Shiite religious title of ayatollah. Workers also said several of their colleagues had been detained by authorities after their protests Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the Contractual Oil Workers Protest Organizing Council claimed another strike at Abadan, posting videos outside of the massive refinery complex in the city near the Iraqi border. The details in the videos correspond with each and to known features of the facility compared against satellite photos taken in recent months.
The council later called on other oil workers to join them in solidarity — potentially raising the stakes further. The council’s contractors typically build oil facilities, so their demonstrations haven’t affected Iran’s oil and gas production. Drawing in other workers potentially could change that.
It remains unclear how many people have been killed or arrested so far in the protests.
An Oslo-based group, Iran Human Rights, estimates at least 185 people have been killed. This includes an estimated 90 people killed by security forces in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan amid demonstrations against a police officer accused of rape in a separate case. Iranian authorities have described the Zahedan violence as involving unnamed separatists, without providing details or evidence.
Iran’s judiciary spokesman Masoud Setayeshi reportedly said Tuesday that Iran has released some 1,700 people arrested in the recent demonstrations, without offering a total figure for those detained so far.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi alleged without providing evidence that U.S. sanctions affected Amini’s ability to get medicine for the chronic illnesses she faced. However, an Iranian government report Friday said that she was taking hydrocortisone and levothyroxine — two medicines made in Iran available in pharmacies in the country.
___
Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Protests in Iran over woman’s death reach key oil industry
By JON GAMBRELL
YESTERDAY
This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Workers at refineries crucial for Iran’s oil and natural gas production protested Monday over the death of a 22-year-old woman, online videos appeared to show, escalating the crisis faced by Tehran.
The demonstrations in Abadan and Asaluyeh mark the first time the unrest surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini threatened the industry crucial to the coffers of Iran’s long-sanctioned theocratic government.
While it remains unclear if other workers will follow, the protests come as demonstrations rage on in cities, towns and villages across Iran over the Sept. 16 death of Amini after her arrest by the country’s morality police in Tehran. Early on Monday, the sound of apparent gunshots and explosions echoed through the streets of a city in western Iran, while security forces reportedly killed one man in a nearby village, activists said.
Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
From the capital, Tehran, and elsewhere, online videos have emerged despite authorities disrupting the internet. Videos on Monday showed university and high school students demonstrating and chanting, with some women and girls marching through the streets without headscarves as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.
Online videos analyzed by The Associated Press showed dozens of workers gathered at the refineries in Asaluyeh, some 925 kilometers (575 miles) south of Tehran, on the Persian Gulf. The vast complex takes in natural gas from the massive offshore natural gas field that Iran shares with Qatar.
In one video, the gathered workers — some with their faces covered — chant “shameless” and “death to the dictator.” The chants have been features across protests dealing with Amini’s death.
“This is the bloody year Seyyed Ali will be overthrown,” the protesters chanted, refusing to use the title ayatollah to refer to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. An ayatollah is a high-ranking Shiite cleric.
The details in the videos correspond with each and to known features of the facility compared against satellite photos taken Sunday.
Iran did not acknowledge any disruption at the facility, though the semiofficial Tasnim news agency described the incident as a salary dispute. Iran is one of the world’s top natural gas suppliers, just after the U.S. and Russia.
In Abadan, a city once home to the world’s largest oil refinery, videos also showed workers walking off the job. The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran cited a statement it said came from the Contractual Oil Workers Protest Organizing Council that called for a strike over “the suppression and killings.”
“We declare that now is the time for widespread protests and to prepare ourselves for nationwide and back-breaking strikes,” the statement said. “This is the beginning of the road and we will continue our protests together with the entire nation day after day.”
The violence early Monday in western Iran occurred in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as well as in the village of Salas Babajani near the border with Iraq, according to a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. Amini was Kurdish and her death has been felt particularly in Iran’s Kurdish region, where demonstrations began Sept. 17 at her funeral there.
Hengaw posted footage it described as smoke rising in one neighborhood in Sanandaj, with what sounded like rapid rifle fire echoing through the night sky. The shouts of people could be heard.
There was no immediate word if people had been hurt in the violence. Hengaw later posted a video online of what appeared to be collected shell casings from rifles and shotguns, as well as spent tear gas canisters
Authorities offered no immediate explanation about the violence early Monday in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tehran. Esmail Zarei Kousha, the governor of Iran’s Kurdistan province, alleged without providing evidence that unknown groups “plotted to kill young people on the streets” on Saturday, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Monday.
Kousha also accused these unnamed groups that day of shooting a young man in the head and killing him — an attack that activists have roundly blamed on Iranian security forces. They say Iranian forces opened fire after the man honked his car horn at them. Honking has become one of the ways activists have been expressing civil disobedience — an action that has seen riot police in other videos smashing the windshields of passing vehicles.
In the village of Salas Babajani, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Sanandaj, Iranian security forces repeatedly shot a 22-year-old man protesting there who later died of his wounds, Hengaw said. It said others had been wounded in the shooting.
It remains unclear how many people have been killed so far. State television last suggested at least 41 people had been killed in the demonstrations as of Sept. 24. There’s been no update from Iran’s government since.
An Oslo-based group, Iran Human Rights, estimates at least 185 people have been killed. This includes an estimated 90 people killed by security forces in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan amid demonstrations against a police officer accused of rape in a separate case. Iranian authorities have described the Zahedan violence as involving unnamed separatists, without providing details or evidence.
Meanwhile, a prison riot has struck the city of Rasht, killing several inmates there, a prosecutor reportedly said. It wasn’t immediately clear if the riot at Lakan Prison was linked to the ongoing protests, though Rasht has seen heavy demonstrations in recent weeks since Amini’s death.
The semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Gilan provincial prosecutor Mehdi Fallah Miri as saying, “some prisoners died because of their wounds as the electricity was cut (at the prison) because of the damage.” He also alleged prisoners refused to allow authorities access to those wounded.
Miri described the riot as breaking out in a wing of a prison housing death penalty inmates.
___
Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Workers at refineries crucial for Iran’s oil and natural gas production protested Monday over the death of a 22-year-old woman, online videos appeared to show, escalating the crisis faced by Tehran.
The demonstrations in Abadan and Asaluyeh mark the first time the unrest surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini threatened the industry crucial to the coffers of Iran’s long-sanctioned theocratic government.
While it remains unclear if other workers will follow, the protests come as demonstrations rage on in cities, towns and villages across Iran over the Sept. 16 death of Amini after her arrest by the country’s morality police in Tehran. Early on Monday, the sound of apparent gunshots and explosions echoed through the streets of a city in western Iran, while security forces reportedly killed one man in a nearby village, activists said.
Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
From the capital, Tehran, and elsewhere, online videos have emerged despite authorities disrupting the internet. Videos on Monday showed university and high school students demonstrating and chanting, with some women and girls marching through the streets without headscarves as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.
Online videos analyzed by The Associated Press showed dozens of workers gathered at the refineries in Asaluyeh, some 925 kilometers (575 miles) south of Tehran, on the Persian Gulf. The vast complex takes in natural gas from the massive offshore natural gas field that Iran shares with Qatar.
In one video, the gathered workers — some with their faces covered — chant “shameless” and “death to the dictator.” The chants have been features across protests dealing with Amini’s death.
“This is the bloody year Seyyed Ali will be overthrown,” the protesters chanted, refusing to use the title ayatollah to refer to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. An ayatollah is a high-ranking Shiite cleric.
The details in the videos correspond with each and to known features of the facility compared against satellite photos taken Sunday.
Iran did not acknowledge any disruption at the facility, though the semiofficial Tasnim news agency described the incident as a salary dispute. Iran is one of the world’s top natural gas suppliers, just after the U.S. and Russia.
In Abadan, a city once home to the world’s largest oil refinery, videos also showed workers walking off the job. The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran cited a statement it said came from the Contractual Oil Workers Protest Organizing Council that called for a strike over “the suppression and killings.”
“We declare that now is the time for widespread protests and to prepare ourselves for nationwide and back-breaking strikes,” the statement said. “This is the beginning of the road and we will continue our protests together with the entire nation day after day.”
The violence early Monday in western Iran occurred in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as well as in the village of Salas Babajani near the border with Iraq, according to a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. Amini was Kurdish and her death has been felt particularly in Iran’s Kurdish region, where demonstrations began Sept. 17 at her funeral there.
Hengaw posted footage it described as smoke rising in one neighborhood in Sanandaj, with what sounded like rapid rifle fire echoing through the night sky. The shouts of people could be heard.
There was no immediate word if people had been hurt in the violence. Hengaw later posted a video online of what appeared to be collected shell casings from rifles and shotguns, as well as spent tear gas canisters
Authorities offered no immediate explanation about the violence early Monday in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tehran. Esmail Zarei Kousha, the governor of Iran’s Kurdistan province, alleged without providing evidence that unknown groups “plotted to kill young people on the streets” on Saturday, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Monday.
Kousha also accused these unnamed groups that day of shooting a young man in the head and killing him — an attack that activists have roundly blamed on Iranian security forces. They say Iranian forces opened fire after the man honked his car horn at them. Honking has become one of the ways activists have been expressing civil disobedience — an action that has seen riot police in other videos smashing the windshields of passing vehicles.
In the village of Salas Babajani, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Sanandaj, Iranian security forces repeatedly shot a 22-year-old man protesting there who later died of his wounds, Hengaw said. It said others had been wounded in the shooting.
It remains unclear how many people have been killed so far. State television last suggested at least 41 people had been killed in the demonstrations as of Sept. 24. There’s been no update from Iran’s government since.
An Oslo-based group, Iran Human Rights, estimates at least 185 people have been killed. This includes an estimated 90 people killed by security forces in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan amid demonstrations against a police officer accused of rape in a separate case. Iranian authorities have described the Zahedan violence as involving unnamed separatists, without providing details or evidence.
Meanwhile, a prison riot has struck the city of Rasht, killing several inmates there, a prosecutor reportedly said. It wasn’t immediately clear if the riot at Lakan Prison was linked to the ongoing protests, though Rasht has seen heavy demonstrations in recent weeks since Amini’s death.
The semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Gilan provincial prosecutor Mehdi Fallah Miri as saying, “some prisoners died because of their wounds as the electricity was cut (at the prison) because of the damage.” He also alleged prisoners refused to allow authorities access to those wounded.
Miri described the riot as breaking out in a wing of a prison housing death penalty inmates.
___
Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
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