At least 450 people have been arrested in Mazandaran, a province in northern Iran, during the past 10 days of protests, according to the province’s chief prosecutor.
Protests sparked by the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini have spread across the country. They have met with internet shutdowns and violent repression.
The official death toll in the riots is 41, while rights groups say the real number is more than 75.
Amnesty International said at least four children had been killed by state forces since the protests began. He described a “heartbreaking pattern” of “deliberate and illegal fire of live ammunition against protesters.”
Heba Morayef, Amnesty’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “The rising death toll is an alarming indication of how ruthless the authorities’ assault on life has been human under the darkness of the internet shutdown”.
Iranian officials said on Monday that more than 1,200 people had been arrested as the crackdown on the protests widened. Protesters took to the streets again Monday night in Tehran and elsewhere, witnesses told Agence France-Presse.
The video, shot from several floors above street level, allegedly in the city of Tabriz, showed people protesting to the sound of tear gas canisters being fired by security forces, in footage released by the Iran Human Rights group, based in in Oslo.
The group said at least 76 people had died in the crackdown.
Amini was visiting Tehran when she was arrested by the moral police who disagreed with the way she had veiled her hair. Although police say she died of natural causes, her family says she was tortured and killed.
“During the trip to the police station she was tortured and insulted,” Amini’s cousin Erfan Mortezaei told Sky News. “He suffered a concussion from a blow to the head. There is a report from Kasra hospital [in Tehran] that effectively says she was already medically dead by the time she got to the hospital.”
Despite efforts to block Iranians from accessing apps like Instagram and WhatsApp, videos of people allegedly killed during the protests have gone viral on social media.
The parents of the youths killed during the protests have expressed their disappointment at the response of the international community. “People expect the UN to defend us and the protesters,” the father of 21-year-old Milan Haghigi was quoted as saying by Amnesty International. “I can condemn too [the Iranian authorities]the whole world may condemn them, but what is this condemnation for?”
The videos showed protests on Sunday night in Tehran and cities including Yazd, Isfahan and Bushehr.
The Norway-based Kurdish rights group Hengaw said a protest was held in Amini’s hometown of Saqqez despite a heavy military presence, and a 10-year-old girl was reported to have been taken to hospital after being shot in the northern city of Bukan.
Other reports said students at three universities in Tehran were refusing to attend classes.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report