Iran general says more than 300 dead in Amini unrest
Iran has for the first time reported that more than 300 people have died in over two months of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody. The Islamic republic has deployed state security forces against what it labels “riots” that broke out after the 22-yearold Kurdish-Iranian died on September 16, three days after her arrest for allegedly breaching Iran’s dress code for women.
“Everyone in the country has been affected by the death of this lady,” said Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a video published by the Mehr news agency.
“I don’t have the latest figures, but I think we have had perhaps more than 300 martyrs and people killed,” among them some of “the best sons of the country”, said Hajizadeh, head of the Guards’ aerospace division.
The Iranian toll includes those who have taken to the streets as well as dozens of police, troops and IRGC militia who have died in clashes with demonstrators or who were killed elsewhere.
The latest official death toll is much closer to the figure of at least 416 people
“killed in the suppression of protests in Iran” published by the Oslo-based non-government group Iran Human Rights.
The group says its toll includes those killed in violence related to the Amini protests and in distinct unrest in the southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Iranian toll includes those who have taken to the streets as well as dozens of police, troops and IRGC militia who have died in clashes with demonstrators or who were killed elsewhere.
448 killed in crackdown: rights group
In Paris, a rights group said yesterday said Iranian security forces have killed at least 448 people in a crackdown on protests that began in mid-September, over half in ethnic minority region.
Of the 448 people claimed to have been killed, 60 were children aged under 18, including nine girls, and 29 women, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group said.
It said 16 people were killed by security forces in the past week alone, of whom 12 were slain in Kurdish-populated areas where protests have been particularly intense.