Iran was rocked by unrest on Wednesday, with massive protests in Tehran and other parts of the country marking 40 days since the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody sparked an antigovernment movement.
Adding to the turmoil, a gunman in the south of the country opened fire on a holy site, killing at least 15 people.
The gathering at Ms. Amini’s grave in Iran’s restive Kurdistan province took place on the 40th day since her death, a date of remembrance in Islamic tradition, despite warnings from authorities saying they wouldn’t permit processions marking her death.
In the evening, protests erupted throughout the country, including large demonstrations in Tehran. A resident of northern Tehran said the streets were “crowded like never before.”
Iranian officials blamed protesters for paving the ground for the attackers, but didn’t provide evidence linking the two events.
“This heart-wrenching disaster is an ultimatum to all those who prepared ground for the enemies’ plots by creating unrest in the past weeks,” said parliament speaker Mohammad Qalibaf, who is a former commander in the Revolutionary Guard, according to the state news agency IRNA.
Hours after the attack, Islamic State claimed responsibility through its official news outlet Amaq, the first attack claimed by the extremist group in Iran since an assault on a Revolutionary Guard parade in southern Iran in 2018, which killed dozens of soldiers.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi vowed to avenge the shooting in Shiraz, and find and punish the people behind it.
“This evil will definitely not go unanswered,” Mr. Raisi said, according to IRNA. Mr. Raisi and other officials have repeatedly accused Iran’s foreign enemies of orchestrating the protests through agents inside the country.
Iranian mourners marched toward the Aichi cemetery in Saqqez, Mahsa Amini’s hometown.
Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Throngs of mourners walked to the grave of Ms. Amini at the Aichi cemetery in the town of Saqqez, where some chanted “Death to the dictator,” according to videos posted online by Hengaw, an organization that reports on human-rights violations in the area. Others chanted, “This is the year of the blood, Seyed Ali will be toppled,” referring to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Online videos of crowds gathered at Ms. Amini’s grave chanting slogans against the government were verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal.
In the afternoon, a gunman opened fire at Shah Cheragh, a major Shiite holy site in the southern city of Shiraz, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens, according to Iran state media.
Iran’s religious sites have previously been targeted by groups such as Islamic State and other Sunni Islamist groups.
In the lead-up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, opposition activists used 40th-day mourning processions for protesters killed by security forces to turn gatherings into new rallies that reinforced the uprising and ended up toppling the Shah.
On Wednesday, online videos showed the road outside the cemetery where Ms. Amini is buried clogged with cars and drivers honking their horns, an expression of protest. Another video showed a woman sitting by Ms. Amini’s grave without wearing the Islamic veil, or hijab. Ms. Amini died after being detained for allegedly violating the Islamic dress code by wearing her hijab inappropriately.
Two prominent Iranian soccer players, Ali Daei and Hamed Lak, had traveled to Saqqez to participate in the memorial, but were picked up Tuesday night at their hotel by security forces and taken to a governmental guesthouse, Hengaw said. Mr. Daei, who is retired and one of Iran’s most famous athletes, has previously expressed support for the protest movement.
IRNA on Tuesday published a statement that it claimed was from Ms. Amini’s family members saying they wouldn’t hold a ceremony marking the 40 days since her death, “considering the circumstances and in order to avoid any unfortunate problem.”
The semiofficial ISNA news agency said the crowd in and around the cemetery numbered around 10,000 people.
The aunt of Nika Shahkarami, another young woman who died after protesting against the government, said on Instagram that her family would gather by her grave to mark 40 days of her passing on Thursday.
Following the procession at the grave, clashes broke out in several parts of Saqqez town, with security forces firing pellets and tear gas, according to the Kurdish human-rights activists in the area.
In Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, antiriot forces fired warning shots in the air and used batons to break windows of cars whose drivers were honking their horns in solidarity with the protesters, according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, a human-rights monitor.
All the shops in the city’s bazaar were closed, the group said, as part of a strike among merchants that has also prompted workers in Iran’s oil and sugar industries to halt their work. Stock-market traders in Tehran joined the strike on Wednesday for the first time, according to online videos.
Iran’s Kurdistan province, where Ms. Amini was born and buried, is home to a significant Sunni Muslim ethnic minority and has been a focus for Iranian authorities in their crackdown on the protest movement. Tehran views separatist Kurdish groups from the region as terrorists, and although these groups haven’t been visible in the broader protest movement, the government has blamed them, and separatist groups in other provinces, for stirring unrest.
The country’s Revolutionary Guard in September fired more than 40 ballistic missiles into northern Iraq after blaming Iranian Kurdish separatists based there for fomenting the turmoil inside Iran.
The Iranian government has also blamed foreign countries, particularly the U.S., for orchestrating the protests. A hard-line member of the Parliament’s national security committee, Ebrahim Rezai, on Tuesday made a thinly veiled threat, saying that Iran had shaped battlefields outside the country and would continue to do so.
“It can’t be that Tehran’s streets are unquiet and NATO’s streets are quiet,” Mr. Rezai said on Twitter.
In the capital, Tehran, medical staff marched in front of the medical council, chanting, “Mullahs, get lost,” according to online videos and a resident.
Following the protests, the president and vice president of the medical council resigned due to aggression by security forces against doctors who attempted to protest peacefully, according to the semiofficial ILNA labor news agency. The council’s president, Moayed Alavian, resigned after being punched in the face by a security officer, according to the Hammihan newspaper.
In the evening, protests erupted across the country. Online videos also showed medical students in a seated demonstration at Tehran’s Beheshti University chanting, “Women, life, freedom,” a slogan of the protest movement. Students gathered at other universities, which have become hotbeds of protest in recent weeks, including for high-school girls who have helped energize the movement. In the conservative southern city of Yazd, female university students gathered at a dormitory on Tuesday night and chanted, “Death to the dictator.”
The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday announced new sanctions on Iran, targeting Iranian officials and entities over the crackdown on protesters. Among the designated individuals was Hedayat Farzadi, who the Treasury Department accused of running Evin Prison, where most political prisoners are held. The director-general of prisons in Tehran province, where Evin is located, Sayyid Heshmat Hayat al-Ghayb, and the director-general of prisons in Kurdistan Province, Murad Fathi, were also among the sanctioned.
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
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