PARIS —
Iranian security forces killed at least three protesters Saturday in the latest
violence against demonstrations sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a rights
group said.
اضافة اعلان
The country’s clerical leadership under Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei is facing its biggest challenge since the Islamic Revolution of
1979, in the two months of civil unrest since Amini’s death in custody on
September 16.
The state has responded with a crackdown that
Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said in an updated toll had left at least
378 people dead, among them 47 children.
Hengaw, a Norway-based rights group which monitors
abuses in Kurdish areas, warned the situation was “critical” in the town of
Divandarreh in the western province of Kurdistan, where government forces had
shot dead at least three civilians.
Protesters have been killed in 25 of Iran’s 31
provinces, IHR said Saturday — including 123 in eastern Sistan-Baluchistan and
40 in Amini’s home province of Kurdistan.
Protester’s corpse ‘seized’
Protests raged overnight in
the town of Bukan in
Kurdistan, where Revolutionary Guards opened fire on
family members mourning a slain protester and taking his body from hospital
before burying it in an undisclosed location, Hengaw said.
Activists accuse Iran’s security forces of carrying
out secret burials of protesters they have killed, to prevent more violence
from flaring at their funerals.
“Last night, after Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
forces attacked Shahid Gholi Pur Hospital in Bukan, they seized Shahryar
Mohammadi’s body and buried him secretly,” Hengaw said.
The group said the forces “opened fire on his family
and inflicted injuries on 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 shot dead by security forces, in a video
published by the 1500tasvir monitor.
The rights group
said security forces had killed at least 25 people in Kurdistan since Tuesday,
when protesters thronged streets on the anniversary of a lethal 2019 crackdown
known as “Bloody November”.
“Twenty-three people were killed by direct fire, one
by torture, and one by knife stabs,” Hengaw said.
At least 12 security personnel have been killed in
the three days of protests called to mark the November 15 anniversary, according
to an AFP tally from official sources.
Hundreds were killed in the crackdown three years
ago on street violence that erupted over a hike in fuel prices.
‘Deliberate silence’
Iran’s supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday vowed “punishment” for “murders” and
vandalism during the protests across the country.
He was quoted by state television as saying foreign
powers “were trying to get people out on the streets” and “exhaust the
authorities”, but said they had failed.
Iran’s foreign ministry hit out at the “deliberate
silence of foreign promoters of chaos and violence in Iran in the face of ...
terrorist operations in several Iranian cities”.
Iran Human Rights warned that the regime had been
mounting a “campaign of spreading lies” ahead of a meeting of the
UN Human Rights Council next week.
“They have two goals by attributing the killing of
the protesters to terrorist groups like Daesh,” said its director, Mahmood
Amiry-Moghaddam.
“They want to use it as an excuse for more
widespread use of live ammunition,” he told AFP.
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