The country’s clerical leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei faces its biggest challenge since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, in two months of violent protests following Amini’s death in custody on September 16. Authorities have responded with a crackdown that the Olso-based Iran Human Rights Group (IHR) says has left at least 342 people dead, half a dozen already sentenced to death and more than 15,000 arrested. On Saturday, Hengaw, a Norway-based rights group that monitors abuses in Kurdish areas, told AFP that “repressive government forces opened fire on protesters in the town of Divandarreh, killing at least three civilians.” Protesters were killed in 22 of Iran’s 31 provinces, IHR said on Wednesday, including 123 in Sistan-Baluchistan and 32 in Kurdistan’s Amini province. Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, died three days after she was arrested in Tehran by the notorious morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s mandatory hijab law. Protests raged overnight in the Kurdistan city of Bukan, where Revolutionary Guards opened fire on family members mourning a slain protester and took his body from the hospital before burying it at an undisclosed location, Hengau said. Activists accuse Iran’s security forces of conducting secret burials of protesters they killed to prevent more violence from erupting at their funerals. “Last night, after the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) forces attacked the Shahid Gholi Pur Hospital in Bukkan, they seized the body of Shahryar Mohammadi and buried him secretly,” Hengaw said, adding that the forces “opened fire in his family and caused injuries to at least five of them.” Elsewhere, hundreds of mourners were seen marching Saturday along a road near Mahabad in West Azerbaijan province for the funeral of Kamal Ahmadpour, a young man who was shot dead by security forces, in a video posted by 1500tasvir monitor. “The forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have significantly increased the use of lethal weapons in attacks on protesters in the past five days,” Hengau told AFP. The rights group said security forces had killed at least 25 people in Kurdistan since Tuesday, when protesters thronged the streets to mark the anniversary of the deadly 2019 crackdown known as “Bloody Aban” – or Bloody November. “Twenty-three people were killed by direct fire, one by torture and one by stabbing,” Hengau said. Iran’s state-run newspaper on Saturday reported that 14 security personnel were killed in the three days of protests held to mark the November 15 anniversary. Hundreds have been killed in a crackdown on street violence in 2019 sparked by rising fuel prices. Iran’s foreign ministry criticized the “deliberate silence of foreign supporters of chaos and violence in Iran in the face of … terrorist operations in many Iranian cities.” “It is the duty of the international community and international assemblies to condemn the recent terrorist acts in Iran and not provide a safe haven for extremists,” he added. Iran accuses Western nations that host Persian media – including Britain – of fomenting the unrest. Britain’s domestic spy agency, MI5, said on Wednesday that Iran wanted to kidnap or kill UK-based people it considers “enemies of the regime”, with at least 10 plots uncovered this year. Several dead in Iran as months-long protests intensify – video The Times reported on Saturday that British police deployed armed response vehicles outside the Persian-language Iran International TV station in London, following threats by Iran against its journalists. On Wednesday, 10 people, including a woman, two children and a security officer, were killed in two separate attacks in the cities of Izeh and Isfahan, authorities said. Two members of Iran’s pro-government Basij paramilitary force were stabbed to death in the northeastern city of Mashhad while trying to intervene against “rioters”, state news agency Irna reported.
