Tehran – Iran’s lackluster presidential election season erupted in violence Sunday, with five bombs killing up to nine people and Iranian police beating and arresting protesters at a women’s rights demonstration in Tehran.
Four bombs exploded shortly after 11 a.m. local time in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, killing at least six people and wounding 70, the provincial governor told state-run Iranian television.
Iranian journalists based in Ahvaz put the figure at eight dead and 80 wounded, however.
The fifth blast occurred in Teh ran at about 9 p.m., killing one person and wounding four, according to television and eyewitness accounts.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, the deadliest in the Islamic Republic in more than a decade and a rarity since the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988. But Iranian television, which is controlled by Iran’s conservative power brokers, accused the bombers of trying to disrupt Friday’s presidential elections.
Iranian apathy over a flagging economy and a government in which unelected clerics wield the true power has made voter turnout a key issue for the dominant conservatives. They are keenly aware that the polls are being watched not only by Iranians but also by the international community as a measurement of the popularity of the 26-year- old Islamic system of government.
Three of Sunday’s bombs in Ahvaz exploded outside government buildings, including the governor’s office, officials said.
“Unfortunately, most of those killed were women and children,” the governor of the oil- rich province on the Iraqi border told Iranian television.
The Tehran bomb, meanwhile, exploded inside a trash can near a gas station at Imam Hussein Square in the city’s center, said one Iranian journalist at the scene.
Earlier that afternoon, police clashed with protesters attempting to join a sit-in for women’s rights outside Tehran University, beating back people with batons. A group of nearly 200 demonstrators – most of them women – were allowed to continue their hour-long peaceful protest, whose organizers had not sought a government permit for fear it would be rejected. Five Nobel laureates had signed a petition in favor of the women’s efforts to amend Iran’s constitution so it affords them equal rights.
Police scattered some 200 more people who wanted to join the protest. At least two people were seen being arrested and 10 being beaten with batons.
The police also parked buses in front of the protest to prevent passers-by along the busy Enghelab, or “Revolution,” Boulevard from seeing it.
