Death Toll from Iran Protests Rises to 12: State TV

The IRIB (state TV) declared on Monday that 10 people have lost their lives during the Sunday night clashes across Iran, raising the death toll to 12 since the beginning of protests on Thursday.

The state TV did not provide further details about the victims. However, Mashallah Nemati, the governor of Doroud in Western province of Lorestan, had earlier confirmed that four people have lost their lives and six wounded during the recent protests in this city, according to official accounts.

“During the first day of protests (Saturday), two people were killed and six wounded,” he noted, according to the governor’s official website.

He stressed that there is no accurate account of the people killed or wounded during the second day yet, but two citizens were killed in a car crash caused by the rioters on Sunday.

A firefighting vehicle deployed to contain a fire in a bank was seized by rioters, and while put on neutral gear, it crash with another car in which a man and a young boy were killed, he was quoted as saying by ISNA.

Hedayatollah Khademi, the representative of the city of Izeh in the Iranian Parliament, also told the Etemad Online news website that two people have been killed during the clashes on Sunday night.

He quoted the governor of Izeh, a city in southwestern Iran, as saying that the police forces had not been supposed to shoot people.

Therefore, we don’t think they have been killed by the Law Enforcement, he added.

Also in an interview with ILNA, he said this city has long been faced with the problem of ordinary people’s possession of guns and cold weapons, and this has caused troubles every now and then.

The protests, which started in the religious cities of Mashhad and Qom on Thursday, mainly focused on economic grievances, particularly the surge in prices and the financial corruption of the state bodies.

However, the ensuing protest rallies in other cities on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday involved more political slogans. Officials and analysts believe foreign and anti-Iran media and officials are trying to make the demonstrations political and provoke people to chant anti-Establishment slogans.