Clashes were reported on Wednesday between Iranian security forces and protesters in Mahsa Amini’s hometown, after crowds gathered near her grave marking the 40th day of her death while in police custody on September 16.
The crowds have been described as ‘too large’ to be stopped by the security forces.
Wednesday marks the 40th day since Amini’s death and the end of the mourning period.
The Iranian security forces opened fire on people who gathered at the grave of Mahsa Amini, and dozens were arrested.
Dozens of women and men who gathered at the grave in Saqqaz, the hometown of Mahsa Amini in Kurdistan in western Iran, chanted ‘Woman, life, freedom’ and ‘death to the dictator,’ according to videos posted on social media.
However, videos showed thousands of residents walking along a highway, through a field, and across a river to bypass roadblocks and reach the Aichi cemetery.
Other videos show plumes of smoke from several fires in the streets of a different neighborhood nearby. Gunshots are heard in the background as protesters walk the streets.
As per media reports, after the clashes, the internet service was cut off in Saqqaz due to ‘security considerations’, adding that the number of people who gathered reached nearly 10,000 people.
Activists said that the security services warned Amini’s family not to hold a ceremony on the anniversary of her death and to ask people to visit her grave, Wednesday, in Kurdistan province, otherwise ‘they should worry about their son’s life,’ according to AFP.
The morality police in the capital, Tehran, arrested the 22-year-old Kurdish woman on September 13, for allegedly wearing the hijab ‘inappropriately’.
Amini fell into a coma after collapsing in a detention center and died three days later. There were reports of officers hitting her in the head with a truncheon, but the police denied that she had been mistreated and said she had a heart attack.
The incident caused outrage among many Iranians and the first protests erupted after Amini’s funeral in Saqqaz, with women removing their headscarves in solidarity with her cause.
The protests spread quickly and developed into one of the most serious challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.
Women were in the foreground, defiantly waving their headscarves in the air, lighting them on fire, and cutting their hair in public.
School girls also demonstrated in stadiums and streets in an unprecedented phenomenon.
