DUBAI, Oct 17 (Reuters) – Eight prisoners died as a result of a fire at Tehran’s Evin prison over the weekend, Iran’s judiciary said on Monday, doubling the death toll from a fire that has increased the pressure on the government as it struggles to contain further protests.
The fate of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who died in custody on 16 September after being detained by Iran’s morality police for “inappropriate dress”, sparked a wave of protests that spread rapidly and to all layers of society.
The riots have become one of the boldest challenges to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution, with protesters calling for the fall of the Islamic Republic, even if the protests don’t appear close to toppling the system.
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Iran’s judiciary said Saturday night’s fire was started by prisoners in a workshop after a fight, and the dead had died of smoke inhalation. They were all from a section of the prison for inmates jailed for robbery-related crimes, he said.
Tehran’s harsh crackdown on protests that include people from all strata of society has drawn strong international criticism from the United States and other Western powers.
Seemingly opening another new channel of foreign pressure, several European Union countries on Monday called for sanctions against Iran over the transfer of Iranian drones to Russia.
Ukraine has reported a series of Russian strikes with Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in recent weeks, and on Monday Russia struck Ukrainian cities with drones, killing at least four people in an apartment building in central Kyiv during the morning rush hour.
Ukraine said the attacks were carried out by Iranian-made “suicide drones” and said Tehran was responsible for the “killings of Ukrainians.”
Iran denies supplying drones to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has not commented.
The Iran protests have seen Iranians calling for the fall of the Islamic Republic, even if the demonstrations don’t seem close to overthrowing the system.
Eight prisoners died as a result of a fire at Tehran’s Evin prison over the weekend, Iran’s judiciary said on Monday.
Iran’s judiciary said Saturday night’s fire was started by prisoners in a workshop after a fight, and the dead had died of smoke inhalation.
Evin, which was blacklisted by the US government in 2018 for “serious human rights abuses,” has political prisoners and many detainees facing security charges, including Iranian dual nationals.
Iran’s chief judge, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, blamed the fire on “agents of Iran’s enemy”, while the Foreign Ministry said such an event could have occurred in any country.
Iran has accused countries that have expressed support for the protests of meddling in its internal affairs, including President Ebrahim Raisi, who on Sunday blamed his American counterpart for inciting “chaos, terror and destruction” in Iran.
A traffic police officer was shot Monday in Saravan, southeastern Iran, for what the province’s police commander said were “terrorists” armed with AK-47 assault rifles.
The sounds of gunfire were frequently heard in the Kurdish town of Sanandaj, according to audio files received by the human rights group Hengaw.
A dozen youths on a key historic street in the city of Isfahan demonstrated on Monday, chanting “death to the dictator,” a popular slogan referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
At the university in Mazandaran in northern Iran, dozens of students were heard asking their professors to back the protests on Monday, a video shared on social media showed.
KURDISH REGION
The protests, which began at Amini’s funeral in his Kurdish hometown of Saqez, quickly spread to cities and provinces in Iran, a country of more than 80 million people.
Demonstrations resumed early Monday in the central city of Yazd and in several other cities, including Piranshahr in the northwest and Tehran.
The Twitter account of widely followed activist Tasvir1500 posted a video showing people setting tires on fire in the streets and calling for Khamenei’s death.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the videos.
Much of the crackdown by security forces has been focused on the northwest, where the majority of Iran’s 10 million Kurds live, but the protests have spread to other areas. ethnic minority home with longstanding grievances against the state.
Iran’s religious leaders have said the riots are part of a separatist uprising by the Kurdish minority, threatening the unity of the nation rather than its clerical rule.
Iran has deployed the Basij militia, volunteer military troops that have been at the forefront of suppressing popular unrest, but have failed to take control.
The Revolutionary Guard elite, which has not participated in the crackdown, began military exercises on Monday.
Human rights groups said at least 240 protesters had been killed, including 32 minors. More than 8,000 people had been arrested in 111 cities and towns, the Iranian activist news agency HRANA said on Saturday. Authorities have not released a death toll.
Iran, which has blamed the violence on enemies inside and outside the country, denies that security forces killed the protesters. State media said on Saturday that at least 26 members of the security forces had been killed by “rioters”.
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Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold, Marine Strauss, Gabriela Baczynska; Writing by Michael Georgy Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky, William Maclean
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