Kochi: Iran has killed hundreds of anti government protesters even as the Islamic Republic has warned tit for tat to US if it used force against Tehran, media reports said.
There were reports of security forces
“firing live rounds. It’s like a war zone, the streets are full of blood. They’re taking away bodies in trucks,” reports said.
Another 10,000 people have been detained over the fortnight of unrest, the reports said.
Meanwhile, the US has threatened to intervene in Iran. The US President Donald Trump said that Iranian leaders had expressed willingness “to negotiate”.
The US “may have to act before a meeting”, Trump said.
Trump has not elaborated on what the US is considering, but on Sunday he said “we’re looking at some very strong options”.
Iran’s parliament speaker warned that if the US attacked, both Israel and US military and shipping centres in the region would become legitimate targets, BBC said.
The protests which began over soaring inflation are now calling for an end to the clerical rule of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Sunday the country announced three days of mourning for what it called “martyrs killed in Iranian national battle against the US and Israel”.
The BBC and most other international news organisations are unable to report from inside Iran, and the Iranian government has imposed an internet shutdown since Thursday, making obtaining and verifying information difficult. On Sunday, Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, who lives in the US and whose return protesters have been calling for, told demonstrators that Trump had “carefully observed your indescribable bravery” in a social media post.
“Your compatriots around the world are proudly shouting your voice,” he wrote, pledging: “I know that I will soon be by your side.”
He encouraged people to continue protesting on Sunday evening, but to stay in groups or with crowds and not “endanger your lives”.
The protests have been the most widespread since an uprising in 2022 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.
Over 550 people were killed and 20,000 detained by security forces over several months, according to human rights groups.
