At least 92 people have been killed as Iran has cracked down on women-led protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the notorious morality police, the group Iran Human Rights said Sunday.
As protests stretch into a third week, President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday said that the "enemies" of Iran had "failed in their conspiracy".
Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian, was pronounced dead on September 16 after she was detained for allegedly breaching rules requiring women to wear hijab headscarves and modest clothes, sparking Iran`s biggest wave of popular unrest in almost three years.
An additional 41 people died in clashes Friday in Iran`s far southeast, an area bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan, Oslo-based IHR also said, citing local sources. Those protests were sparked by accusations a police chief in the region had raped a teenage girl of the Baluch Sunni minority, it said.
Solidarity rallies with Iranian women -- who have defiantly burnt the hijabs they have been obliged to wear since the 1979 Islamic revolution -- have been held worldwide, with demonstrations in more than 150 cities on Saturday.
In Iran itself, clashes between protesters and security forces have rocked cities nationwide for 16 nights in a row after they first flared in western regions home to Amini and Iran`s Kurdish minority.
"Rioters" and "thugs", some hurling Molotov cocktails, attacked the Tehran headquarters of Iran`s leading ultraconservative daily Kayhan on Saturday, said the newspaper, whose director is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam urged the international community to take urgent steps against the Islamic republic to stop the killing of Iranian protesters, saying they amount to "crimes against humanity".
