Videos circulating online show dozens of protesters taking cover in alleyways as the sound of heavy artillery fire echoes through the streets. In some, people lie on the ground, motionless and bloody, while others show people flocking to a local hospital to give blood.
Iran has been the scene of protests against Islamic rule since the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahza Amini in Tehran on September 16, three days after he was violently beaten and detained by “discipline guards”. A strict female dress code because, although she was wearing a ‘hijab’ (Islamic veil), it allowed part of her hair to be seen. That day, Amini was already hospitalized in a coma and would die three days later.
That young woman Protests, initially concentrated in Iran’s western Kurdish region, have spread across the country and escalated into calls for the overthrow of the Islamic fundamentalist clerics who have held power in the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Kurdish human rights group Hengao said security forces fired heavy artillery at demonstrators in the town of Javanrud, where two protesters were killed earlier in the funeral, citing witnesses who saw Iranian forces firing machine guns at them.
Hengau said seven people were killed today, while another group, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, said five people had died.
The latter group noted that many of the injured were being treated at home for fear of being detained in hospitals, making it difficult to ascertain the balance of casualties. He added that many of them were shot in the head or chest.
Iranian authorities have severely restricted coverage of the protests and have periodically cut off internet access, making it difficult to confirm details of the more than two months of unrest in the country.
The semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday night’s protests in Javanrut that security forces had fired live ammunition, killing two and wounding four. Today, there are no reports of such episodes of violence in the state media.
Funerals have been the scene of renewed protests in recent weeks, similar to those during the 1979 Islamic revolution that brought the clerics to power. The protests of the past two months represent the biggest challenge to the theocratic rule in more than a decade.
At least 426 people have been killed and more than 17,400 arrested, according to human rights activists in Iran, a group monitoring the ongoing protests, and at least 55 members of the Iranian security forces have been killed.
Jalal Mahmudzadeh, a deputy representing the Kurdish city of Mahabad, told the daily Etemad newspaper that 11 people have been killed during protests in the city since late October, many of them in recent days. Noting that some members of the security forces opened fire on houses and commercial establishments on Saturday, the deputy appealed to the authorities to adopt a more moderate approach.
Social unrest in the country overshadowed the 2022 soccer World Cup, where Iran’s national team faced England: Iranian players did not sing their country’s national anthem and some supporters chanted Amini’s name in the 22nd minute of the match.
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