Riots in Iran, so far 233 killed by protests

Human rights monitors reported hundreds of deaths, including children, as the movement entered its fifth week.

Protesters cheered “Down from Dickator” on the streets of Ardiríll in the northwest of the country. Students gathered in front of universities in Kermanshah, Rast and Tehran, according to videos in social media.

In the town of Sanader, a hot spot for demonstrations in the northern Kurdish region, school girls cheered, “Groi, life, freedom of”, on a central road.

Protests erupted following public outrage over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amin in custody by police. It was arrested by Iran's moral police in Tehran for violating the strict code of dress of the Islamic Republic. Iran's government insists that Amin was not mistreated in custody by police, but her family says her body had bruises and other beatings after being stopped.

At least 233 protesters have been killed since demonstrations involving Iran began on 17 September, according to US-based human rights watchdog HRANA.

The group says 32 of the dead were under the age of 18. Earlier, the Oslo-based Organisation for Human Rights in Iran had estimated 201 people had been killed.

Iranian authorities have called the riots a Western conspiracy without giving evidence.

Public anger in Iran has reached a peak following the death of 22-year-old Amin, causing girls and women to remove mandatory street headscarves as a sign of solidarity.

Other sectors of society, including oil workers, have also joined the movement, which has spread to at least 19 cities, becoming one of the biggest challenges for Iran's theocracy since the country's 2009 Green Movement.

Strikes resumed Saturday in key cities across the Kurdish region, including Saqrezi, Amin and Bukan's hometown and Sanadin, where the protests began.

The government has responded with brutal measures, arresting activists and organisers of the protest, attacking famous Iranian names for expressing their support, even confiscating their passports and using ammunition and tear gas to disperse crowds, causing deaths among protesters.

In a widely distributed video Saturday, Basij members, a volunteer paramilitary group dressed in civilian clothes, are seen forcing a woman into a car and shooting bullets in the air amid a protest in Gohardash, northern Iran.

Popular Internet disruptions have also made it difficult to communicate protesters with the outside world, while Iranian authorities have arrested at least 40 journalists since the beginning of the riots, according to the Committee for Protection of Journalists. / VOA