Iran protests – Revolutionary Guard member dies of wounds
In a rare admission, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced Monday that one of its officers has been killed in protests that continue for the fifth consecutive week.
A brief statement issued by the Revolutionary Guards said that an officer, First Lieutenant Mehdi Lutfi, died Monday in hospital from his injuries during protests in the capital Tehran two days ago.
The officers, who were sent two days ago to a gathering place of “rioters”, were wounded after a Molotov cocktail was thrown on the road where the protestors spilled oil, the Revolutionary Guards said.
Iranian authorities describe participants in protests over the death of a young Kurdish woman after she was detained by morality police as “rioters” and accuse Western countries of inciting violence.
Tehran denies that the young Kurdish woman was a security professional who died under torture. It says her death was the result of an underlying disease, which her family, human rights organizations and activists in the country rejected.
“Suppression” of protests
The Iranian authorities refuse to disclose the number of security forces killed during the protests, which are entering their second month following the killing of a young girl, Mahsa Amini, by police in Tehran in mid-September.
The IRGC and Basij forces are involved in confronting demonstrators in different Iranian cities, while the Iranian authorities have stepped up their “repression” and violent confrontation of protests, which has drawn criticism from the international community.
Unofficial statistics
“According to our sources, 240 demonstrators, including 32 children, were killed by security forces in Iran,” the Turkey-based Iranian human rights organization, Hrana, said on Sunday, noting that 26 members of the Iranian government’s security forces were killed during the crackdown on demonstrators.
While Iran has not released accurate statistics on the dead, injured, and detained during the recent protests, the organization has been able to identify 738 detained protesters, including 175 university students.
