US Confirms Report Citing Iran Officials as Saying 1,500 Kil

[NewsReporter]

VOA - World News

The United States has confirmed a news report citing unnamed Iranian officials as saying about 1,500 people were killed in a crackdown by security forces on anti-government protests last month.

In a report published Monday, London-based Reuters said it obtained the death toll from three Iranian interior ministry officials who said the fatalities included "at least 17 teenagers and about 400 women as well as some members of the security forces and police."

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In a Monday tweet, the State Department quoted U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook as saying the Reuters report "underscores the urgency for the international community to punish the perpetrators and isolate the regime for the murder of 1,500 Iranian citizens."

Reuters' death toll was much higher than the latest fatalities reported by British rights group Amnesty International, which said in a Dec. 16 statement that it documented the killings of at least 304 demonstrators by Iranian security forces in days of unrest that erupted on Nov. 15.

Hook's reference to the "murder of 1,500 Iranian citizens" also marked a substantial increase in the Trump administration's assessment of the number of people killed in Iran's crackdown.

In a Dec. 5 briefing to reporters, Hook said it appeared that the Iranian government  "could have murdered over a thousand Iranian citizens since the protests began."

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Iranian State-approved news agency Tasnim quoted an official at the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) as saying the Reuters report referencing the deaths of 1,500 people was "fake news."

"These claims are based on premeditated psychological warfare and lack credibility," Alireza Zarifian Yeganeh said, echoing previous Iranian dismissals of Western reports about fatalities in the protests.

But Iran has declined to try to prove the Western reports wrong by releasing its own figures for those killed, wounded and arrested in the crackdown on the protests. Iranian authorities sparked the demonstrations in dozens of cities nationwide by raising the subsidized price of gasoline by 50%, further straining the finances of Iranians facing high unemployment and inflation in a shrinking economy under heavy U.S. sanctions.

In a Dec. 16 interview with VOA Persian, Amnesty's Middle East researcher Philip Luther said he expected the group to raise its figure of 304 protesters killed due to its ongoing examination of "credible" reports showing Iranian security forces used live ammunition while suppressing the demonstrations.

Amnesty did not respond immediately to a VOA Persian request for comment on the Reuters report citing the figure of 1,500 people killed in the unrest.

Amnesty's reported death tolls from Iran's unrest have been widely quoted by Western news outlets, which, besides Reuters, have been unable to verify the full scale of the killings due to Iranian restrictions on their access to the country.

The rights group has said it compiles its death tolls from reports whose credibility it ascertains by interviewing and cross-checking details provided by a "range of sources inside and outside Iran, including victims' relatives, journalists and human rights activists involved in gathering the information."

This article originated in VOA's Persian Service.