![\"\"](\"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Izeh-Protests-300x200.jpg\")
VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – Water shortage protests in drought-plagued southwestern Iran appear to have spread to more cities and\u202fresulted in what authorities say is a third fatality\u202fas the unrest extended\u202finto\u202fa\u202fseventh\u202fday.<\/p>\n
Videos posted to social media appeared to show street protests on Wednesday in several parts of Khuzestan province, including the capital, Ahvaz, and the cities of\u202fBehbahan, Dezful, Izeh, Masjed\u202fSoleyman, Ramshir and Susangerd.<\/p>\n
In one clip said to be from Izeh, security forces appeared to fire tear gas at protesters. In another clip said to be from Masjed\u202fSoleyman, demonstrators\u202fchanted,\u202f”Police, support us,”\u202fa reference to local concerns about security forces cracking down harshly on earlier rallies.<\/p>\n
Other social media videos\u202fappeared to show Iranians in the city of\u202f Yazdenshahr,\u202fin neighboring Isfahan province,\u202frallying in support of the Khuzestan protesters. The Isfahan rally would be the first such protest in the province since the daily protests began in Khuzestan last Thursday and evolved into\u202fthe widest and most sustained disturbances Iran has seen in months.<\/p>\n
VOA could\u202fnot\u202findependently\u202fverify the videos\u202fsaid to be from Khuzestan and Isfahan. Iran\u202fhas\u202fbarred\u202fVOA\u202ffrom reporting inside\u202fthe country.<\/p>\n
In another development, Iranian state-approved news site ILNA quoted the top official of Izeh city in Khuzestan, Hassan Nabouti, as reporting the death of one person in local\u202fprotests against\u202fwater shortages on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Nabouti\u202fsaid the person was wounded in the protests, taken to a hospital by a private car and was pronounced dead.\u202fNabouti\u202fsaid an investigation was under way to\u202fidentify\u202fthe attacker and added that 14 security personnel were hurt in the protests.<\/p>\n
Another Iranian state news agency, Fars, identified the fatality as a young man named Hadi Bahmani.<\/p>\n
Social media users posted video on Thursday purporting to show Bahmani’s burial on the outskirts of Izeh. They said he was a 17-year-old construction worker.<\/p>\n
Iranian state media\u202fpreviously\u202freported the killings of two men by gunfire during demonstrations\u202flast Friday.<\/p>\n
Social media videos that appeared to be from Tuesday’s protests in\u202fIzeh\u202fbut that could not be verified by VOA\u202fshowed protesters chanting\u202f”Death to Khamenei”\u202fand\u202f”Reza Shah, bless your soul.”\u202fGunshots were\u202falso heard\u202fin those videos.<\/p>\n
“Death to Khamenei”\u202fhas been a common refrain of Iranian anti-government protesters angered by the authoritarian rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei\u202fin recent years.<\/p>\n
“Reza Shah, bless your soul”\u202falso has been uttered in previous waves of Iranian street protests as a sign of affection toward the founder of the nation’s former monarchy,\u202fReza\u202fShah.\u202fKhamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ousted Reza Shah’s son from power in Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.<\/p>\n
Digital communication with the Iranian protest regions remained difficult. London-based internet monitoring group\u202fNetBlocks\u202fsaid there had been a “significant regional disruption to mobile internet service in Iran” since the water shortage protests began one week ago.<\/p>\n
“Cellular data analysis metrics corroborate widespread user reports of cellular network disruptions, consistent with a regional internet shutdown intended to control protests,” Netblocks said in an online statement.<\/p>\n
Iranian state-approved news agency ISNA said President Hassan Rouhani told Khuzestan’s provincial governor in a Thursday phone call that authorities must listen to and respect the rights of protesters who have suffered from drought and extreme heat. ISNA said Rouhani also had ordered First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri to visit Khuzestan on Friday to investigate the situation there.<\/p>\n
In a Wednesday press briefing, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington was\u202fclosely following\u202f the Khuzestan\u202fprotests,\u202f”including reports that security forces have fired on protesters.”<\/p>\n
“We support the rights of Iranians to peacefully assemble and to express themselves.\u202fIranians, just like any other people, should enjoy those rights without fear of violence, without fear of arbitrary detention by security forces,”\u202fPrice said.<\/p>\n
Iran’s water shortages are partly the result of weather-related factors, including\u202fa sharp drop in rainfall, which has been more than 40% below last year’s levels in recent months, and high summer temperatures.<\/p>\n
Experts say decades of Iranian government mismanagement also have fueled the drought.\u202fThey blame authorities’\u202fpoorly\u202fconsidered placement\u202fand construction\u202fof\u202fhydroelectric\u202fdams\u202fand the diversion of water from Khuzestan’s rivers and wetlands to industrial sites in neighboring regions, practices that have dried up sources of drinking and agricultural water for\u202fthe province’s\u202fresidents.<\/p>\n
This article originated in VOA’s\u202fPersian Service\u202f.\u202fClick here\u202f and here \u202fto read\u202fthe original Persian versions of this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – Water shortage protests in drought-plagued southwestern Iran appear to have spread to more cities and\u202fresulted in what authorities say is a third fatality\u202fas the unrest extended\u202finto\u202fa\u202fseventh\u202fday. Videos posted to social media appeared to show street protests on Wednesday in several parts of Khuzestan province, including the capital, Ahvaz, and the cities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97072"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97074,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97072\/revisions\/97074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}