Unverified footage shows armed police firing at least one cartridge after trying to inspect students’ phones
Iranian security forces fired tear gas outside a girls’ school in Tehran when clashes broke out after staff tried to inspect students’ cellphones amid ongoing anti-government protests.
Iran’s Education Ministry said several students had been treated in an emergency for a drop in blood pressure, but denied security forces had entered the school.
But videos circulating on social media showed heavily armed security forces outside the school. One clip showed them on motorcycles firing at least one tear gas canister. The authenticity of photographs may not be independently verified.
The riots sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian who was detained by the Islamic Republic’s morality police for “inappropriate clothing” and died in police custody, swept through Iran for five weeks. Rights teams say nearly 250 others have died in the crackdown.
Women and women played a prominent role in the protests, cutting and burning veils. The deaths of several teenage women who were reportedly killed in the protests fueled additional anger.
The protests continued on Monday, with a demonstration at a university in the western city of Hamedan and academics shouting at a government spokesman who visited a university in Tehran, according to academics and rights groups.
The Education Ministry said there was a clash at Tehran High School between staff, students and parents after the school’s principal insisted on checking the girls’ phones.
The widely followed Twitter account of activist Tasvir1500 said uniformed forces attacked the school and at least one woman was injured, but city police denied her account.
“Following the announcement of a clash near one of the best schools . . . police were dispatched to the scene and investigated the challenge which turned out to be a fight between several thugs,” Tehran police said, adding that the agitators had been known and detained.
Human rights teams say thousands of others have been arrested as part of the crackdown, which began in Amini’s hometown of Saqez in northwestern Iran before spreading across the country.
The protesters called for an end to the clerical regime that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the overthrow of the ideal leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Monday, a Tehran court charged another 315 people arrested in recent “riots” for “gathering and conspiring with the intent to harm national security, propaganda opposed to the formula and triggering public unrest,” the official IRNA news firm reported, filing a court case. official.
Four of the detainees were charged with being enemies of God, a crime that according to Iran’s sharia interpretation carries the death penalty.
Videos on social media showed anti-government protests at several universities, with academics chanting “Death to Khamenei. “
Khamenei warned that no one dares to think he could uproot the Islamic Republic and accused its warring parties of fomenting unrest. State television reported the deaths of at least 26 members of the security forces.
At Tehran’s Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology, video footage showed government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi interrupted with chants of “Woman, life, freedom” as he addressed the students, who also shouted: “We don’t need a corrupt system, we don’t need a murderous guest.