Authorities said on Saturday that more than 200 individuals have died in Iran’s anti-regime demonstrations since Mahsa Amini’s death while in police detention in mid-September.
According to a statement broadcast by state news agency IRNA, the death toll was issued by the state security council of the interior ministry and comprised security personnel, regular residents, “rioters,” and armed anti-regime terrorists.
It has been days since a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) estimated that more than 300 people had died in the protests, which the government refers to as “riots,” but this is Iran’s first official death toll.
The numbers provided by the IRGC commander and the State Security Council are less than those provided by rights organizations, which claim that security forces have murdered over 400 individuals during the protests.
Since Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who had collapsed in police detention on September 16 and died three days later, protests have erupted all over Iran. She had been taken into custody by Tehran’s morality police for allegedly breaking the rigid hijab regulations of the regime.
In the rallies, which have evolved into one of the most audacious threats to the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979, demonstrators have been clamoring for regime change.
