Protesters gather around a burning barricade during a protest for Mahsa Amini, a woman who died following being arrested by the Islamic republic’s “morality police,” in Tehran on September 19, 2022. (Credit: / AFP via Getty Images)
At least 17 people have been killed in Iran in protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody last week, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. CNN cannot independently verify the death toll.
Thousands of people have been protesting across the country, with videos on social media showing protesters chanting “women, life, freedom”, and some showing women removing veils from their heads.
Amnesty International says eyewitness accounts and video analysis show a pattern of “Iranian security forces illegally and repeatedly firing metal pellets directly at protesters,” according to a press release published on Wednesday.
“Amnesty International gathered evidence of the illegal use of buckshot and other metal pellets, tear gas, water cannons and beatings with batons by security forces to disperse protesters,” the statement said.
Tehran provincial governor-general Mohsen Mansouri said this week that foreign actors were involved in the protests.
“According to the relevant administrations, the footprint of certain foreign embassies and intelligence services is traceable in the last days of unrest,” Mansouri told the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
CNN cannot independently verify his claims.
“For a few nights now, the path of the protests once morest the death of Mahsa Amini has been diverted from the path of the protests over her death to create riots, chaos and attacks on people’s lives and property by some of the abusers present at the meetings,” Tasnim said Thursday.
“In the absence of security, the first thing that is in danger is the lives of citizens, and according to any logic, the concentrations that originated protesting the death of a person, cannot continue and result in the death of dozens of other innocents. . people,” added Tasnim.
