The death toll after a week of deadly protests in Iran could be as high as 76, a rights group has said, far higher than the figure given by authorities.
Widespread unrest continues after the death of a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police in Tehran for not wearing her hijab properly and died in custody.
At least six women and four children are among the dead, according to Iran Human Rights, as the protests spread across 14 provinces of the country.
More than 70 protesters were arrested on Tuesday.
“At least 76 protesters are confirmed to have been killed by security forces. Most families have been forced to quietly bury their loved ones at night and pressured against holding public funerals,” the rights group is claiming.
State television in the Islamic Republic put the official death toll lower, with only 41 protesters and police killed since the protests began 17 September.
Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iranian women’s rights activist and the daughter of the country’s former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was also arrested on Tuesday on charges of “inciting riots”, the state media reported.
Ms Hashemi was arrested by the country’s security agency for “instigating riots in east Tehran”, which claimed that the “provocations” by the activist failed to bring people to the streets, reported Turkish state news website Anadolu Agency.
Iran has been rocked by protests in which thousands of women have taken part. They are calling for the end of the clerical administration, with tensions being inflamed by a severe crackdown on protestors, many of whom are facing tear gas, live ammunition, birdshot and metal pellets.
Protests turned violent in Iranian cities such as Tehran, Tabriz, Karaj, Qom and Yazd, among many others.
Amnesty International has accused Iran’s security forces of responding to the protests with “unlawful force, including by using live ammunition, birdshot and other metal pellets, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds of others".
Videos emerging from the Middle-Eastern country showed protesters chanting “woman, life, liberty” and women burning their veils in a symbolic show of dissent.
Slogans of “death to the dictator” – a reference to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – were also heard in the demonstrations. In the Kurdish cities of Sanandaj and Sardasht, footage shows riot police firing at protesters.
Authorities have also clamped down on internet access in several provinces in a bid to restrict sharing of photos and videos on social media.
The UN high commissioner for human rights called on Iran’s clerical heads on Tuesday to “fully respect the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, peaceful assembly and association”.
“Hundreds have also been arrested, including human rights defenders, lawyers, civil society activists and at least 18 journalists,” said UN spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani.
Amini was arrested for donning an “improper hijab”, after which she was severely beaten by “members of the morality police” during her arrest and transfer to the Vozara detention centre.
“Amini fell into a coma at the detention centre and died in hospital on 16 September. Iranian authorities said she died of a heart attack, and claimed her death was from natural causes,” the office of the UN high commissioner of human rights said.
Her death was a result of alleged torture and ill-treatment, it added.
Meanwhile, Iran launched a deadly drone bombing campaign against an Iranian-Kurdish opposition group over the border in northern Iraq, killing at least nine people and wounding 32 others.
Iran’s attacks targeted Koya, 35 miles east of Irbil, said Soran Nuri, a member of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. The group, known by the acronym KDPI, is a leftist armed opposition force banned in Iran.
Iraq’s Foreign Ministry and the Kurdistan Regional Government have condemned the strikes.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency and broadcaster said the country’s Revolutionary Guard targeted bases of a separatist group in the north of Iraq with “precision missiles” and “suicide drones.”
