Protesters in Iran have tried to break into a local government building in the southern province of Fars, on a fourth day of demonstrations sparked by a currency collapse.<\/p>\n
Officials said three police officers were injured and four people arrested in the city of Fasa.<\/p>\n
Confrontations were also been reported in the western provinces of Hamedan and Lorestan.<\/p>\n
The authorities in the capital, Tehran, had declared Wednesday a bank holiday – in an apparent effort to quell the unrest.<\/p>\n
In video that emerged on social media and was verified by the BBC, a crowd is filmed breaking the gate of the governor’s office in Fasa.<\/p>\n
Then, in another post, security men are seen shooting in response. Clouds of tear gas rise in front of shuttered shops.<\/p>\n
Across the country, schools, universities and public institutions were closed because of the last-minute public holiday announced by the Iranian government.<\/p>\n
It was ostensibly to save energy because of the cold weather, though it was seen by many Iranians as an attempt to contain the protests.<\/p>\n
They began in Tehran on Sunday – among shopkeepers angered by another sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency against the US dollar on the open market.<\/p>\n
By Tuesday, university students were involved and they had spread to several cities, with people chanting against the country’s clerical rulers.<\/p>\n
The protests have been the most widespread since an uprising in 2022 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was accused by morality police of not wearing her veil properly. But they have not been on the same scale.<\/p>\n
To prevent any escalation, tight security is now reported in the areas of Tehran where the demonstrations began.<\/p>\n
President Masoud Pezeshkian has said his government will listen to the “legitimate demands” of the protesters.<\/p>\n
But the prosecutor general, Mohammad Movahedi-Azad, has also warned that any attempt to create instability would be met with what he called a “decisive response”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Protesters in Iran have tried to break into a local government building in the southern province of Fars,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-380176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}