Two people are reported to have been killed during growing unrest in Iran on the fifth day of protests over the soaring cost of living.<\/p>\n
Both the semi-official Fars news agency and human rights group, Hengaw, said people had died during clashes between protesters and security forces in the city of Lordegan, in south-western Iran.<\/p>\n
On Thursday videos posted on social media showed cars set on fire during running battles between protesters and security forces. <\/p>\n
Many protesters have called for ending the rule of the country’s supreme leader. Some have also called for a return to the monarchy.<\/p>\n
Thursday marks the fifth day of protests in cities across the country, sparked by a currency collapse.<\/p>\n
Videos verified by BBC Persian show protests in the central city of Lordegan, the capital Tehran and Marvdasht in the southern Fars province taking place on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Fars reported that in Lordegan two people were killed, citing an informed official. The report did not specify whether those killed were protesters or members of the security forces.<\/p>\n
Rights group Hengaw said the two killed were protesters, naming them as Ahmad Jalil and Sajjad Valamanesh.<\/p>\n
BBC Persian has not been able to independently verify the deaths.<\/p>\n
Separately state media said a member of the security forces linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) was killed in clashes with protesters on Wednesday night in the city of Kudasht, in the western Lorestan province. <\/p>\n
The BBC has not been able to verify this and protesters say the man was one of their number and was shot dead by the security forces. <\/p>\n
A further 13 police officers and Basij members were injured by stone throwing in the area, the state media report said.<\/p>\n
Schools, universities and public institutions were closed across the country on Wednesday after a bank holiday was declared by authorities in an apparent effort to quell the unrest. <\/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 – 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":"Two people are reported to have been killed during growing unrest in Iran on the fifth day of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-215360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}