At least five people have been killed in clashes between protesters and police in Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing local media.
The protests, which have now entered their fifth day, are the biggest in three years, The Guardian reported. The newspaper cited activists and human rights defenders who warned of an escalation and said that security forces were acting extremely harshly. “This is a real battlefield and they are shooting mercilessly”, an eyewitness told the newspaper.
According to the Fars news agency, three people were killed and 17 wounded in an attack on a police station in the western province of Lorestan. Two more people were killed during protests in the city of Loregan, about 470 kilometers south of Tehran. The agency said some protesters began throwing stones at the city's administrative buildings, including the provincial governor's office and a mosque, while police used tear gas.
Earlier, Iranian state television IRIB reported that a security officer, a 21-year-old member of the Basij (a volunteer force affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), was killed during overnight protests in the city of Quhdasht in Lorestan.
The protests in Iran began on Sunday, December 28, at the main bazaar in Tehran. Initially, shopkeepers and students from several Iranian universities took to the streets, dissatisfied with the government's handling of the sharp depreciation of the currency and the rapid rise in prices (the rial fell to a record low of 1.45 million to the US dollar that day). Against this backdrop, the head of the Central Bank of Iran, Mohammad Farzin, resigned.
The demonstrations subsequently spread to cities across the country and violence broke out. Amid the protests, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reported a “psychological war“ waged from outside by “the enemies of Iran“, and attempts to “sow discord in society“.
On December 30, President Masoud Pezeshkian instructed the Interior Minister to begin a dialogue with representatives of the protesters, stating that this was necessary “so that the government could make every effort to resolve the problems and act responsibly“.