Today, a sizable fire broke out in a notorious jail in the Iranian capital that houses political detainees and opponents of the regime. As nationwide protests entered their sixth week, gunshots were seen on online footage and in local media.
According to a senior security official quoted by Iran’s state-run IRNA, there were fights between detainees in one ward and prison guards. According to the official, inmates started the fire by setting a warehouse full of prison uniforms on fire.
He claimed that in order to defuse the situation, the “rioters” were removed from the other detainees.
According to the authority, “everything is absolutely under control” and firefighters are putting out the fires.
However, videos of the fire kept appearing online. Videos showed shots ringing out as plumes of smoke engulfed the sky in Tehran amid the sound of an alarm.
Witnesses reported hearing at least three loud explosions emanating from the region and saw police block roads and highways leading to Evin prison. Near the prison, which is located in the capital’s north, there was significant traffic along main highways, and many drivers honked in support of the demonstrations.
Riot police were seen riding on motorbikes toward the facility, as were ambulances and fire trucks. Internet access was reportedly banned in the region, according to witnesses.
An “armed struggle” erupted inside the jail walls, according to the Iranian organisation located in the US Centre for Human Rights in Iran. The first gunfire was reportedly heard in prison’s Ward 7. It was unable to instantly confirm this account.
As anti-government protests in various Iranian cities’ universities and along prominent streets grew more intense, the prison caught fire. Human rights monitors reported hundreds dead, including children, as the movement concluded its fourth week.
On the streets of Ardabil, a city in the northwest of the nation, protesters yelled “Down with the Dictator.” According to videos posted on social media, protests by students took place in front of universities in Kermanshah, Rasht, and Tehran. Schoolgirls screamed “Woman, life, freedom” down a main street in Sanandaj, a city that has become a focal point for protests in the northern Kurdish region.
After widespread outrage over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, while in police custody, protests broke out.
Tehran’s morality police detained her for breaking the Islamic Republic’s stringent dress code. The Iranian government maintains that Amini was not abused while in police custody, but according to her family, when she was arrested, her body exhibited bruises and other symptoms of violence.
According to US-based rights watchdog HRANA, since protests took across Iran on September 17, at least 233 protestors have died. The group said 32 among the dead were below the age of 18.
Prior to now, Iran Human Rights, located in Oslo, estimated that 201 individuals had died.
Without offering any proof, Iranian authorities have dismissed the disturbance as a supposed Western plot.
Public anger in Iran has coalesced around Amini’s death, prompting girls and women to remove their mandatory headscarves on the street in a show of solidarity.
Other segments of society, including oil workers, have also joined the movement, which has spread to at least 19 cities, becoming one of the greatest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the country’s 2009 Green Movement.
Prisons have also seen riots, with recent reports of fighting between inmates and staff in the northern province of Gilan’s Lakan prison.
Today’s major Kurdish cities, including Saqqez, the cradle of the protests and Amini’s hometown, Bukan, and Sanandaj, saw the return of commercial strikes.
The government has responded with a brutal crackdown, arresting activists and protest organisers, reprimanding Iranian celebrities for voicing support, even confiscating their passports, and using live ammunition, tear gas and sound bombs to disperse crowds, leading to deaths.
In a video widely distributed today, plainclothes Basij, a paramilitary volunteer group, are seen forcing a woman into a car and firing bullets into the air amid a protest in Gohardasht, in northern Iran.
It has also been challenging for demonstrators to contact with the outside world due to widespread internet outages, and the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Iranian authorities have jailed at least 40 journalists since the unrest started.
From a prison in the capital of Iran, bullets may be heard during protests.
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