Four Police Officers Killed In Unclear Circumstances In Iran As Unrest Continues

Four police officers have been killed in unclear circumstances in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan Province amid ongoing unrest sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody in September.

A regional police chief told the IRNA state news agency that the four had been killed at a police station along the Iranshahr-Bampour highway. He said an official probe had been launched.

However, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency said a soldier had shot dead three policemen and a fellow soldier. It quoted a local police commander as saying that the soldier opened fire after a dispute with another soldier over personal issues. The soldier was detained immediately. There were no additional details.

Such shootings are rare in Iran. In 2016 a soldier killed himself after shooting to death three of his comrades. Military service of up to 24 months is mandatory for men aged 19 and above in Iran.

Elsewhere, Tasnim reported that a “terrorist” was killed during an attack by two assailants on a station staffed by Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the city of Mahshahr in southwestern Khuzestan Province. There were no other details.

Iran has been rocked by protests and other unrest since Mahsa Amini died in mid-September after being arrested by Iran's notorious morality police for “improperly" wearing a mandatory Islamic head scarf, or hijab.

Her death, which officials blamed on a heart attack, sparked a wave of anti-government protests in cities across the country met by authorities with a harsh crackdown. The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights says at least 277 people, including 40 children, have been killed in the government’s crackdown.

Protests continued at universities across Iran on November 5 despite what activists said were new measures by security forces to halt them.

Students were subjected to dress-code inspections at the north Tehran branch of Azad University, and at the Sharif University of Technology, a leading higher education institution and traditionally a hotbed for dissent.

Students were seen demonstrating and chanting "I am a free woman, you are the pervert" at the Islamic Azad University of Mashhad, in northeast Iran, in a video published by BBC Persian.

"A student dies, but doesn't accept humiliation," sang students at Gilan University in the northern city of Rasht, in footage posted online by an activist.

Dozens were heard chanting similar slogans at a mourning ceremony 40 days after the death of protester Javad Heydari in the northwestern city of Qazvin.

People were observing a "widespread strike" in Amini's home town of Saqez, in Iran's Kurdistan province, where shops were shuttered, according to the Norway-based Hengaw rights group.

On November 4, foreign ministers from the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations condemned Tehran's response to the wave of protests.

"We further condemn the brutal and disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters," the ministers said in a statement after two days of talks in the German city of Muenster.

With reporting by AFP and AP