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Iran’s sparsely populated southeast erupted in protests and violence on Friday, with dozens injured and killed by security forces in several cities, according to human rights monitors. Demonstrators ranged from prayers to gunfire in towns in the predominantly ethnic Baloch region along the country’s southeastern border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, a long-restless region. A human rights activist told the Independent that around 30 people were injured or shot in the town of Khash, a sleepy desert town of 60,000. There were also outbreaks of civil violence in Zahedan, the provincial capital, Iranshahr, Rask and Saravan, as the Revolutionary Guards and other regime armed forces opened fire on protesters. “There were very big protests, a lot of people came out,” Shir-Ahmad Shirani, editor of Haalvash, a Baloch rights group and website, said in an interview. “The security forces started shooting people from the rooftops.” Is the Islamic Republic founded by Khomeini under a legitimate threat? (UGC/AFP/Getty) Videos posted online showed protesters blocking roads with stones and bonfires. In Zahedan, young protesters are seen ducking for cover as regime forces opened fire. “Death to the dictator!” they shout Another video showed a lifeless young man reportedly hit by gunfire in Khash and covered in blood. “Allahu Akbar!” someone cries sadly. Another video showed an entire commercial district of Khash burning, allegedly at the hands of security forces. Hospitals warned of shortages of blood to treat the wounded. Many of the injured and dead were under 18, Mr. Shirani said. Iran has been gripped by seven weeks of protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old kidnapped by morality police. Daily protests have left at least 300 dead and at least 37 members of the security forces killed, according to Hrana, an Oslo-based rights group. On Friday, the G7 group of wealthy Western nations issued a statement of support for the Iranian protesters. “We condemn the violent death of young Iranian woman ‘Jina’ Mahsa Amini after she was arrested by Iran’s so-called ‘morality police,’” the statement read. “We further condemn the brutal and disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters and children.” Many of the dead in the protests have been in Iran’s eastern and western border regions, which are largely populated by ethnic and religious minorities. Iranians are overwhelmingly members of the Shiite sect of Islam, while the Baluchi minority are Sunni Muslims. However, few sectarian tensions have emerged in the weeks of protests, as Iranians from various national, regional, religious and tribal divides have rallied against the Tehran regime. Friday’s violence came a day after Sajjad Shahraki, a Shiite cleric loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was killed in the ethnic Baloch city of Zahedan. It also came on the day the top Sunni cleric in Zahedan, Molavi Abdolhamid, called in his prayer sermon for an internationally watched referendum in the country, drawing cheers from the faithful. The protests also coincided with the anniversary of the 1980 seizure of the United States embassy compound in Tehran by Iranian Islamic radicals, an event marked in Iran with pro-government rallies. State television showed thousands of regime supporters in the streets of various cities, burning American flags and effigies of New York-based Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad. Iranian officials have accused the US of being behind the attacks. “You want to create discord between ethnic groups and turn people against people and create civil war,” Friday prayer leader Kazem Seddiqi told worshipers on Friday. During a fundraising appearance in California on Thursday, US President Joe Biden spotted a ‘Free Iran’ sign in the crowd and replied: ‘Don’t worry. We will liberate Iran. They will be released soon.”
