DUBAI: The death toll in violence surrounding protests in Iran has risen to at least 35 people, activists said Tuesday, as the country’s theocracy acknowledged the unrest in one western province where security forces reportedly raided a hospital.
The figure came from the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which said more than 1,200 people have been detained in the protests, which have been ongoing for more than a week.
It said 29 protesters, four children and two members of Iran’s security forces have been killed. Demonstrations have reached over 250 locations in 27 of Iran’s 31 provinces,
The group, which relies on an activist network inside Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in the past unrest.
The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, reported late Monday that some 250 police officers and 45 members of the Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force have been hurt in the demonstrations. However, Iran’s government has offered no overall statistics or information about the unrest.
Late Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian assigned the country’s interior ministry to form a special team for a “full-fledged investigation” of what had been happening in Ilam province. Malekshahi County in Iran’s Ilam province, some 515 kilometres (320 miles) southwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran, has seen protesters killed as online videos purported to show security forces firing on civilians.
The presidency also acknowledged an “incident in a hospital in the city of Ilam.” Online video showed security forces wearing riot gear raiding a hospital, where activists said they were seeking demonstrators.
The hospital assault drew criticism from the US State Department, which, in Iran’s Farsi language, called the incident “a crime.”
“Storming the wards, beating medical staff and attacking the wounded with tear gas and ammunition
is a clear crime against humanity,” a post on the social platform X read. “Hospitals are not battlefields.”