Demonstrations continued in towns and cities across the republic on Wednesday. Iranians have struggled to gain access to the Internet and Instagram, where videos of security officials attacking protesters have circulated in recent days. Officials blamed foreign and opposition forces for the deaths, including a member of Iran’s security forces. Kurdistan’s police chief, Brigadier General Ali Azadi, confirmed that four protesters have been killed in the province since Saturday. “Enemy groups have committed these crimes,” Azadi told the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. “We urged the youth not to take part in the rallies as we had reliable information that these groups had infiltrated [into protests]. Shahram Karami, the prosecutor of the western province of Kermanshah, said two protesters were killed by anti-regime opposition forces and that the bullets used to kill them were not those used by Iranian security forces. “We urge families in Kermanshah to prevent their young people from participating in these gatherings,” he said, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency. “They get emotional in these gatherings, but the counter-revolutionary forces seek to create instances of death [to fan the crisis].” The governor of Kurdistan province, Esmaeil Zare’i Kousha, said the protesters there “were killed by the enemies of the system and with weapons not used by any of our security forces and military forces,” according to Mehr News Agency. “This is definitely the scenario of the foreign enemy as the evidence and pictures were immediately transmitted to them [opposition] satellite channels”. In the city of Shiraz, one security official was killed, the city’s governor told state news agency IRNA, and four others were wounded. Lotfollah Sheibani added that 15 protesters were arrested on Tuesday night. Police in the northern province of Gilan said 68 protesters were arrested, while 43 security forces were injured. Amnesty International said on Wednesday that security forces used gunfire and other metal pellets, tear gas, water cannons and beatings with batons to disperse the protesters. The group said six men, one woman and one child were killed during protests in Kurdistan, Kermanshah and West Azerbaijan provinces. “Of them, at least four died of injuries sustained by security forces firing metal pellets at close range,” he added. The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old from the Kurdish town of Saqqez. He was arrested last week by the morality police, a branch of Iran’s force that seeks to promote virtue. She was wearing a long black coat and scarf, but arresting officers said her clothing was inappropriate. He collapsed at the morality police center in central Tehran, fell into a coma and died on Friday.

The protests across the country are one of the few demonstrations against the wearing of the hijab since the 1979 revolution that created the theocratic state. Women burned their headscarves during protests with some calling for the abolition of the compulsory hijab. Protests on Tehran’s university campuses continued on Wednesday, according to videos posted on social media. “We will kill whoever killed our sister,” chanted students at the Islamic Azad Science and Research Branch. The governor of Tehran province said on Wednesday that intelligence services suggested that around 1,800 of the protesters in the capital on Monday “had records of participation in previous rallies and riots” and that 700 of them already had “heavy court records”. Mohsen Mansouri claimed in his Twitter post that foreign embassies and intelligence agencies were also involved. Iran’s culture minister, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, said on Wednesday that they were already considering changing the morality police before Amini’s death. “We recognize the criticisms. . . and many of the existing problems will be addressed,” he told local reporters.