Iran arrests more than 1,200 as protest crackdown stokes tensions with West

PARIS: Iran has arrested more than 1,200 protesters, officials said on Monday, in its lethal crackdown on 10 nights of unrest driven by outrage over the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.

At least 41 people have been killed as Iran has heavily deployed security forces against nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of Amini, 22, following her arrest for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict rules on hijab headscarves and modest clothing.

Tensions grew between the Islamic republic and Western nations as Germany summoned the Iranian ambassador, a day after the European Union protested the "widespread and disproportionate use of force" and Tehran called in the British and Norwegian envoys.

Protests flared again across Iran overnight as a Tehran crowd shouted "death to the dictator", calling for the end of the more than three-decade rule of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, in footage shared by Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR).

"Woman, Life, Freedom!" the crowds have chanted as female protesters have defiantly thrown their hijabs into bonfires and blazing rubbish dumpsters -- a rallying cry that has been echoed at solidarity protests worldwide, including in London and Paris at the weekend.

Iranian riot police in black body armour have beaten protesters with truncheons in running street battles, and students have torn down large pictures of the supreme leader and his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in recent video footage published by AFP.

In Iran’s biggest protests in almost three years, security forces have used water cannons but also fired birdshot and live rounds, according to rights groups, while protesters have hurled rocks, torched police cars and set public buildings ablaze.

The IHR rights group said Sunday at least 57 protesters have been killed. The total number of officially reported arrests rose above 1,200, according to state media reports citing various officials, including about 450 in northern Mazandaran province, over 700 reported Saturday in neighbouring Gilan and dozens in several other regions.

"Rioters have attacked government buildings and damaged public property," Mazandaran’s chief prosecutor Mohammad Karimi told official news agency IRNA, charging that they were steered by "foreign anti-revolutionary agents".

Tehran police have been deployed "24 hours a day" and many have not slept, said the Iranian judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, thanking exhausted officers and the capital’s police chief during a visit to their headquarters Sunday, in a video posted by Mizan Online.