On the third day of unrest following an incident that has sparked widespread rage, security forces opened fire on protesters in Iran’s Kurdish region on Monday, according to a Kurdish rights group. The protests were in response to the death of a woman while in police custody.
Following her detention in Tehran last week by the morality police, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old from Iran’s Kurdistan province, went into a coma and passed away, setting off protests around the country, including the capital.
In the Kurdish city of Saqez, Amini’s homeland, security forces opened fire on protesters, leaving two people dead, the Hengaw Human Rights Organization reported on Twitter.
According to the report, a fifth person was murdered in Dehgolan, another town in the Kurdish region, and two more people were killed “by direct fire” from security personnel in the town of Divandarreh.
The fatalities were not formally acknowledged. According to the state-run news agency IRNA, police dispersed ‘limited’ protesters in a number of cities across seven provinces.
State TV said that some protestors had been detained, but it refuted ‘some accusations of killings on social media’ by airing footage of two injured youngsters who denied being killed.
The Persian hashtag #MahsaAmini received close to 2 million Twitter mentions during the widespread condemnations of Amini’s killing.
According to the authorities, Amini became ill as she was waiting with other women being detained by the morality police, who in the Islamic Republic enforce harsh laws mandating that women cover their hair and wear loose-fitting clothing in public.
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