PARIS: Fresh anti-regime protests took place overnight alongside celebrations for Iran’s traditional fire festival in the runup to Persian New Year, monitors said on Wednesday.
Video footage posted on social media showed groups of Iranians chanting anti-regime slogans, throwing headscarves into fires and burning images of the clerical leadership.
The fire festival, called Chaharshanbe Suri in Farsi, is celebrated every year on the night of the last Tuesday of the Iranian calendar year, which ends on March 20.
It is part of Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage and generally frowned upon by the Shiite clerical establishment but is popular with young people.
During the festival, participants jump over bonfires to ward off evil spirits. They also let off fireworks, many of them homemade, resulting in significant casualties every year.
Iran’s emergency services chief, Jafar Miadfar, said 11 people were killed and more than 3,500 injured during this year’s celebrations.
It was the first fire festival since protests erupted in Iran in September over the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, following her arrest for an alleged violation of Iran’s mandatory dress code for women.
The 1500tasvir social media channel, which monitors protest activity, posted footage of dozens of people marching in the Tehran district of Ekbatan chanting: “We are back, the uprising continues.”
It also posted footage of a large crowd chanting anti-regime slogans in the city of Rasht close to the Caspian Sea coast and of fireworks being thrown at police vehicles in Tehran.
In Tehran, women were shown dancing around bonfires and jubilantly throwing their mandatory headscarves into the flames.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said protests also took place in Kurdish-populated regions of western Iran, with people shouting “death to the dictator” in Amini’s hometown of Saqez where security forces reportedly used tear gas.
In the town of Bukan farther north, IranWire website said protesters lit bonfires in the streets, prompting clashes with security forces.
In the capital, protesters set fire to a banner of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the Ekbatan neighborhood, it added.
The protests that followed Amini’s death last September have largely abated in recent months following a deadly crackdown by the security forces.
But analysts have said they need only a spark to flare up again as underlying grievances remain unaddressed.
New protests in Iran during fire festival: monitors
https://arab.news/2wrzs
New protests in Iran during fire festival: monitors
- The fire festival, called Chaharshanbe Suri in Farsi, is celebrated every year on the night of the last Tuesday of the Iranian calendar year
- During the festival, participants jump over bonfires to ward off evil spirits
Second drone in 24 hours found crashed in northwest Turkiye
- The authorities have pointed the finger at Russia for an unmanned aerial vehicle discovered on Friday near the city of Izmit
ISTANBUL: A drone of unknown origin has been found in Turkiye, less than a day after another unmanned aerial vehicle of suspected Russian origin crashed in the northwest, Turkish media reported on Saturday.
According to several independent television networks and the Cumhuriyet newspaper, the drone was found in an empty field near the town of Balikesir, some three hours southwest of Istanbul.
The Turkish authorities had yet to react to the news, but the Halk TV and Haberturk broadcasters reported that the drone was transported to Ankara for analysis.
Citing farmers, several media outlets reported that the crash appeared to have taken place days ago.
The incident, the third of its kind since Monday, comes after Turkiye warned both Russia and Ukraine against letting their ongoing war spill over elsewhere in the region.
The authorities have pointed the finger at Russia for an unmanned aerial vehicle discovered on Friday near the city of Izmit, around 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of the Black Sea, which has seen strikes on ships in recent weeks.
According to the Turkish interior ministry, which has opened an investigation, the drone “is believed to be of Russian-made Orlan-10 type used for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes according to initial findings.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned against the Black Sea becoming an “area of confrontation” between Russia and Ukraine, which occupy the opposite shores of the body of water to Turkiye.
