Iran’s crackdown on protests intensifies in Kurdish region

A protester holds a placard reading ‘Stop Bloodshed in Iran’ during a demonstration of thousands who showed their support for Iranian protesters standing up to their leadership over the death of a young woman in police custody, in The Hague, Netherlands (Peter Dejong/AP)

Iran has intensified its crackdown on Kurdish areas in the country’s west as protests sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman detained by the morality police rage on, activists said.

Riot police fired into at least one neighbourhood in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as Amnesty International and the White House’s national security adviser criticised the violence targeting demonstrators angered by the death of Mahsa Amini.