According to the organization IHR, the leadership in Tehran is running a "campaign of lies" with a view to a session of the UN Human Rights Council next week. The government attributes the killing of demonstrators to the jihadist militia Islamic State (IS) and wants to use this "as an excuse for a broader use of live ammunition," IHR chairman Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told the AFP news agency.
Human rights group Hengaw also told AFP that security forces had "significantly increased the use of deadly weapons in attacks on protesters over the past five days." According to Hengaw, pro-government forces "shot at demonstrators in the city of Diwandarreh and killed at least three civilians" in the most recent incident on Saturday.
According to Hengaw, protests also flared up in the western Iranian city of Bukan. According to the activists, members of the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard broke into a hospital there on Friday evening and "seized and secretly buried" the body of a killed demonstrator. They also shot his family and injured "at least five people".
Activists accuse the Iranian security forces of secretly burying dead protesters to prevent their burial from sparking further protests against the Iranian authorities.
The wave of protests in Iran, which has now been going on for two months, was triggered by the death of the young Kurd Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old was arrested by the so-called moral police because she is said to have worn her Islamic headscarf in accordance with the rules. She died a short time later in hospital.
Tehran is cracking down on the demonstrators. Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday announced "punishment" for "murders" and vandalism during the protests. He was quoted on state television as saying that foreign powers were trying to "get people onto the streets" and "exhaust the authorities," but failed.
Iran has accused Britain, Israel and the United States, among others, of fueling the protests. The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Saturday criticized the "deliberate silence of foreign sponsors of chaos and violence in Iran in the face of (...) terrorist actions in several Iranian cities". It is "the duty of the international community" to condemn the "recent terrorist attacks in Iran and not to offer extremists a safe haven," it said.
Ten people, including a woman, two children and a security official, were killed in two separate attacks in the cities of Ise and Isfahan on Wednesday, state media and a hospital said.
According to the state news agency Irna, two members of the pro-government Basij militia were also stabbed to death in the north-eastern city of Mashhad when they tried to intervene against "rioters". A suspect has since been arrested, the judiciary's website said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, meanwhile, reiterated accusations that the US, Britain, France and Germany were trying to put "maximum pressure" on Tehran. In the past few days and weeks, "the enemies of the Islamic Republic have tried to influence the situation in Iran."
