Sunday, June 21, 2009

Iran: crackdown begins




Violence Grips Tehran Amid Crackdown

Police officers used sticks and tear gas to force back thousands of demonstrators under plumes of black smoke in the capital, after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there would be “bloodshed” if street protests continued.

[S]tate-run media reported that three people were wounded when a suicide bomber attacked at the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the southern part of the city, several miles from the scheduled protests.

The violence unfolded on a day of extraordinary tension across Iran. The opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, appeared at a demonstration in southern Tehran and called for a general strike if he were to be arrested. “I am ready for martyrdom,” he told supporters.
[New York Times]
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