Army, navy and national disaster response force teams continued their search while locals gathered on the banks of the Machchhu river in Modi’s home state of Gujarat.

The colonial-era suspension foot bridge in Morbi was packed with sightseers – many in town to celebrate the Diwali and Chhath Puja festivals – when it gave way on Sunday evening, sending people plunging about 10 metres (33 feet) into the water.

A senior police official told Reuters that about 200 people were on the bridge when it collapsed. Local municipality officials said tickets for about 400 people had been sold, although not necessarily to be on the bridge at the same time.

“The prime minister said the need of the hour is to conduct a detailed and extensive inquiry which will identify all aspects relating to this mishap,” Modi’s office said in a statement as he saw the scene of the disaster.

“He also added that the key learnings from the inquiry must be implemented at the earliest.”

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, from the Congress party, said earlier he refused to politicise the incident, but in the capital New Delhi dozens of protesters demanded the resignation of the Gujarat state chief and called for more compensation.

The protesters called for compensation of 2 million rupees ($24,000) for all victims – the injured and the families of those killed. So far the state and central governments have offered 600,000 rupees ($7,000) for the kin of those who lost their lives.

Local residents at the scene on Tuesday told Reuters they feared the death toll could rise further.

GT Pandya, a senior administrative official in Morbi, said a person who was injured had died from their injuries on Tuesday, taking the toll to 135. One person was still missing according to the authorities’ estimate, he said.

Some 56 people have been discharged from the hospital, while 10 are still admitted with injuries, senior police official Ashok Kumar Yadav told Reuters.

The bridge – 233 metres in length and 1.25 metres wide – was originally built in 1877 and had been closed for six months for repairs until last week.

CCTV footage of the incident showed a group of young men trying to rock the bridge from side to side while others took the photos before they tumbled into the river below as the cables gave way.

Police arrested nine people on Monday on charges including culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Those arrested included ticketing clerks accused of letting too many people onto the bridge and contractors that had been in charge of repair work.

Waving Sudanese flags, thousands of protesters in Khartoum and its suburbs defied security forces who have carried out deadly crackdowns on past rallies, demanding that “soldiers go back to the barracks”.

Security forces responded with tear gas in some areas.

“No partnership, no negotiation with the putschists,” protesters chanted, in what has become a pro-democracy rallying cry.

In Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, a demonstrator was “run over by a (security) forces vehicle”, said the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors in a statement, raising the death toll in the crackdown since the coup to 119.

A year ago to the day, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized power and arrested the civilian leaders with whom he had agreed to share power in 2019, when mass protests compelled the army to depose one of its own, long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

Protesters, calling out that the “revolution continues”, have demanded “a civil democratic Sudan”.

Eyewitnesses said thousands also protested in the cities of Wad Madani and El Obeid south of Khartoum, Gedaref and Port Sudan in the east, Atbara in the north and Nyala in the southwestern Darfur region.

In an attempt to stem protests, authorities restricted internet access nationwide, online monitor NetBlocks said. Access was restored later Tuesday.

Security forces deployed

The authorities in Khartoum ordered all public institutions, schools, and businesses shut Tuesday, as security forces blocked roads and bridges.

Police accused some protesters of “being armed and trained in violence”.

“We’ve been protesting for a year now, and that has enabled us to contain the coup” that gained no “international or regional recognition”, one protester in Khartoum told AFP.

Another, the Sudan flag draped across his shoulders, said: “It’s the first time in history we’re seeing a coup failing to move forward even an inch in a whole year.”

For 12 months, near weekly protests have been met with force. On Sunday, security forces shot dead a protester, pro-democracy medics said.

Western governments say Sudan must return to civilian rule before crucial aid halted in response to the coup can resume.

Already one of the world’s poorest countries, Sudan has plunged into a worsening economic crisis.

Between three-digit inflation and chronic food shortages, a third of its 45 million inhabitants suffer from hunger, a 50 percent increase compared with 2021, according to the World Food Programme.

The cost of food staples has jumped 137 percent in one year, which the WFP says has forced Sudanese to spend “more than two-thirds of their income on food alone, leaving little money to cover other needs”.

Many worry that three years after the 2019 uprising that toppled Bashir, signs point to a reversal of their revolution.

Since the coup, several Bashir-era loyalists have been appointed to official positions, including in the judiciary, which is currently trying the former dictator.

Burhan’s pledge of elections next year is seen as far-fetched, no civilian leaders have taken up the mantle of the army chief’s promised civilian government, and international mediation efforts are stalled.

“All political actors need to put aside differences and focus on the best interest of the Sudanese people,” UN envoy to Sudan Volker Perthes said Saturday.

Deadly clashes

On Friday, 31 protesters were injured, including three who were hit in the eye by tear gas canisters, according to pro-democracy medics.

Western embassies on Monday urged security forces “to refrain from using violence against protesters and to fulfil their obligation to protect freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly”.

A broader security breakdown nationwide has also left nearly 600 dead and more than 210,000 displaced as a result of ethnic violence this year, according to the United Nations.

Sudan is the world’s fifth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change, according to a 2020 ranking in the Global Adaptation Index, compiled by the Notre Dame University in the United States.

More than two-fifths of people depend on farming for a living, and conflicts regularly erupt over access to land, water and livestock grazing.

In the southern Blue Nile state, awash with automatic weapons after decades of civil war, some 250 people were killed in clashes over land last week, the UN said.

Iranian students protested Tuesday at multiple universities, defying a bloody crackdown as tensions mount on the eve of planned ceremonies marking 40 days since Mahsa Amini’s death. 

“A student may die but will not accept humiliation,” they chanted at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, in an online video verified by AFP. Young women and schoolgirls have been at the forefront of protests sparked by Amini’s death last month, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

The 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin died three days after being taken into custody by the notorious morality police on September 13 while visiting Tehran with her younger brother. Activists said the security services had warned Amini’s family against holding a ceremony and not to ask people to visit her grave Wednesday in Kurdistan province, otherwise “they should worry for their son’s life”.

Wednesday marks 40 days since Amini’s death and the end of the traditional mourning period in Iran.

State news agency IRNA published a statement it said was from the family, saying that “considering the circumstances and in order to avoid any unfortunate problem, we will not hold a ceremony marking the 40th day”.

‘Attacked, strip-searched, beaten’

Online videos showed students protesting Tuesday at Beheshti University and the Khaje Nasir Toosi University of Technology, both in Tehran, as well as Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz. The fresh demonstrations came after activists accused security forces of beating schoolgirls at the Shahid Sadr girls vocational school in Tehran on Monday.

“Students of the Sadr high school in Tehran have been attacked, strip-searched and beaten up,” said the 1500tasvir social media channel.

At least one student, 16-year-old Sana Soleimani, was hospitalised, said 1500tasvir, which chronicles rights violations by Iran’s security forces. “Parents later protested in front of the school. Security forces attacked the neighbourhood and shot at people’s houses,” it added.

The education ministry said a dispute erupted between schoolgirls and their parents and school staff after the principal demanded they comply with rules over the use of mobile phones. “The death of a student in this confrontation is strongly denied,” a ministry spokesman said, quoted by Iran’s ISNA news agency.

Families were seen clamouring for information outside the school in Tehran’s Salsabil neighbourhood, in an online video verified by AFP. And in western Kurdistan province, videos posted online by independent rights group Hengaw showed authorities on Tuesday evening patrolling roads leading into Saqqez, Amini’s hometown.

The group, which monitors rights violations in Kurdistan, also tweeted that Iranian football stars Ali Daei and Hamed Lak were in Saqqez as they “want to take part in the 40th day funeral” and were staying at the Kurd Hotel. But they “had been taken to the government guesthouse… under guard by the security forces”, Hengaw said.

Daei has previously run into trouble with authorities over his online support for the Amini protests. Unverified footage posted by Oslo-based Iran Human Rights group showed people gathering outside the Kurd Hotel in Saqqez “in their night protests”.

Top official heckled

Such reports have fuelled further anger over the crackdown that Iran Human Rights said, in an updated toll Tuesday, had cost the lives of at least 141 protesters.

Deadly unrest has hit not only Kurdistan — but also the city of Zahedan in the far southeast. IHR said 93 people were killed in demonstrations that erupted on September 30 over the reported rape of a teenage girl by a police commander.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency said unidentified gunmen killed two Revolutionary Guards in Zahedan Tuesday, taking to eight the number of security personnel killed in Sistan-Baluchistan.

Despite what rights group Amnesty International has called an “unrelenting brutal crackdown”, young women and men were again seen protesting in online videos on Tuesday.

“Death to the dictator” and “Death to the Revolutionary Guards”, women chanted in Tehran metro stations, in videos shared on Twitter.

Students heckled the spokesman for ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi as he addressed Tehran’s Khaje Nasir University, in a video published by the reformist paper Hammihan.

“Spokesman, get lost!” and “We don’t want a corrupt system, we don’t want a murderer”, they shouted at Ali Bahadori Jahromi.

Teachers observed a strike around the country Sunday and Monday over the crackdown, and another work stoppage was said to be under way in Kurdistan on Tuesday.

Amnesty says the crackdown has cost the lives of at least 23 children, while IHR said Tuesday at least 29 children have been killed.

There has also been a campaign of mass arrests of protesters and their supporters, including academics, journalists and even pop stars.

State media said Tuesday that more than 210 people were charged in connection with the protests in Kurdistan, Qazvin and Isfahan.

IRNA said 105 people were charged over protests in Khuzestan, citing the local judicial authorities.

With Iran still shaken by women-led protests over the death of Mahsa Amini one month ago, Elnaz Rekabi flew back to a Tehran airport after the competition in South Korea.

In an Instagram post and comments at the airport, Rekabi has apologised over what happened and insisted her hijab — which all Iranian women including athletes must wear — had accidentally slipped off.

But activists fear her comments have been made under duress under pressure from the Iranian authorities who were likely infuriated by her actions.

“Elnaz is a hero,” chanted dozens of supporters who gathered outside the Imam Khomeini International Airport terminal, clapping their hands and brandishing mobile phones to record the moment.

They continued to chant and applaud as a van and vehicle — one of which they presumed was carrying the climber — drive out of the airport through a sea of people clapping above their heads.

It was unclear where she was headed. Some of the women present were themselves not wearing hijab.

“A hero’s welcome — including by women without the forced-hijab — outside Tehran airport for-pro climber Elnaz Rekabi. Concerns for her safety remain,” said the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

‘State propaganda’?

Inside the airport terminal dressed in a black hoodie and baseball cap, Rekabi was greeted by family members, before addressing state media with a mask pulled down on her face.

“Due to the atmosphere prevailing in the finals of the competition and the unexpected call for me to start my run, I got tangled with my technical equipment and… that caused me to remain unaware of the hijab that I should have observed,” she said.

“I returned to Iran peacefully, in perfect health and according to the predetermined plan. I apologise to the people of Iran because of the tensions created,” she said, adding she had “no plan to say goodbye to the national team.”

Her comments were similar to those made on Tuesday in an Instagram post, in which she apologised for “concerns” caused and insisted her bare-headed appearance had been “unintentional”.

But the Islamic republic has been repeatedly accused by activists of coercing people into making statements of contrition on television or social media.

The British actress of Iranian origin Nazanin Boniadi, who is an ambassador for Amnesty International in the UK, tweeted that it was clear Rekabi had been “being forced to make this statement by authorities that constantly use forced and televised confessions.”

Observers “should not be swayed by state propaganda”, said the CHRI.

UN ‘closely following’

Unconfirmed reports had already suggested she had been pressured by Iranian officials in South Korea. BBC Persian quoted an unnamed source as saying friends had been unable to contact her and the team had left their hotel in Seoul on Monday, two days before the scheduled departure date.

Meanwhile news website Iran Wire said the head of Iran’s climbing federation had “tricked” her into entering the Iranian embassy in Seoul and the federation chief had promised her safe passage to Iran if she handed over her phone and passport.

The Iranian embassy in Seoul, however, issued a statement to AFP denying “all the fake, false news and disinformation regarding” her situation.

The spokesperson for the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights, Ravina Shamdasani, said the UN was “closely following” the case and concerns were being raised with the Iranian authorities. The incident took place at the Asian Championships in sports climbing in Seoul on Sunday.

In the initial bouldering discipline her head was covered with a bandana but in the later lead climbing, scaling a high wall with a rope, she wore only a headband, the stream posted by the International Federation of Sport Climbing showed.

Sunday’s protest took place on the first day of the twice-a-decade congress of China’s ruling Communist Party in Beijing at which Xi is widely expected to win a third leadership term.

Several protest banners had been placed outside the consulate, one with the words, “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party”.

Greater Manchester Police said about 30 to 40 people were gathered outside the Chinese consulate.

“Shortly before 4 p.m. a small group of men came out of the building and a man was dragged into the consulate grounds and assaulted,” a police statement said.

“Due to our fears for the safety of the man, officers intervened and removed the victim from the consulate grounds.”

Footage posted by the BBC showed a man in a black cap and ponytail being hauled through a gate into the consular grounds, where he was kicked and punched by five men as he lay on the ground.

One silver-haired man in a blue beret, glasses and scarf could also be seen grabbing the man’s hair before police entered the consulate grounds and pulled the man out.

The police said in a statement the man – in his 30s – suffered several physical injuries and remained in hospital overnight for treatment. No arrests have been made.

Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts said a full investigation was underway.

Alicia Kearns, a lawmaker in Britain’s ruling Conservative Party and the head of parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said the government should summon the Chinese ambassador and expel or prosecute any official who had beaten protesters.

The Chinese consulate in Manchester did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment. A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Liz Truss said the reports were “deeply concerning”.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing on Monday he was not aware of the situation but that Chinese missions acted in accordance with international diplomatic agreements.

“Chinese embassies and consulates in the UK have always abided by the laws of their country of residence, and we also hope that the British side will facilitate the normal performance of duties of Chinese embassies and consulates,” Wang said.

 Also sanctioned were the Iranian minister overseeing internet curbs and the cyber division of its Revolutionary Guards.

The sanctions list, published in the bloc’s official administrative gazette, also blacklisted the chiefs of the so-called morality police, the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij paramilitary force, a uniformed branch of the national police, and officials in charge of those forces.

Iran vowed an ‘immediate” response to the sanctions.

The 11 individuals and members of the four entities named in the sanctions are subject to EU visa bans and asset freezes.

Ahead of the blacklist’s publication, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said of the “morality” police that it is a “word that is not really appropriate when you see the crimes that are being committed there”.

The list was drawn up before the latest dramatic turn of events in Iran: a deadly fire at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where the regime holds Iranian political prisoners, as well as dual nationals and foreigners.

The EU has been alarmed at the Iranian regime’s bloody crackdown on protests sparked by the death a month ago of Amini, a 22-year-old taken into custody by morality police who arrest women deemed to wear Islamic headscarves inappropriately.

The demonstrations have since morphed into anti-regime street protests, with those taking part demanding the end of the mullah-led regime.

The sanctions list said the “morality” police and its Tehran and national chiefs were responsible for Amini’s death.

“According to reliable reports and witnesses, she was brutally beaten and mistreated in custody, which led to her hospitalisation and to her death on 16 September 2022,” it said.

The information and communications technology minister, Eisa Zarepour, was held responsible for internet blackouts imposed in Iran as the protests flared, curbing Iranians’ access to information and freedom of opinion.

‘Deaths of multiple people’

The Basij force was listed for its “particularly harsh” crackdown on protesters, “resulting in the deaths of multiple people”. It is “directly responsible for serious human rights violations in Iran,” the EU listing said.

Baerbock, arriving at an EU foreign ministers’ meeting that adopted the sanctions, said the “we will not close our eyes” to the abuses being carried out in Iran.

She warned: “If this violence continues, then more (sanctions) will follow.”

The United States, Britain and Canada have already announced their own sanctions against Iran for the rights violations taking place.

Tehran has responded by accusing the United States of fomenting the anti-regime protests.

Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn was sceptical that the sanctions would “hurt” Iran.

But he said: “This regime may have worked during the last 40 years but it is not working now. And that is why the European Union has to take this first step.”

The developments happened as hopes are fading of restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that was torpedoed when then-president Donald Trump in 2018 withdraw US support.

The EU has over the past year and half been coordinating efforts, so far unsuccessfully, to bring the US and Iran back into full compliance with the accord, which aims to curb Iran’s nuclear programme.

Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said reviving the deal was important “but there’s only one party blocking and stonewalling…in the last months and years – and that is Iran itself”.

Iran also fed into the ministers’ discussion on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Kyiv and a growing number of observers say that Iran is supplying Russia with drones to strike Ukrainian targets, which Tehran denies.

The judiciary said four of those injured in Saturday’s fire were in critical condition and those killed had died of smoke inhalation, Iranian state media reported.

The fire at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison came amid ongoing unrest sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s morality police a month ago.

The protests have turned into one of the boldest challenges to the clerical leadership since the 1979 revolution, and have been met with a brutal crackdown.

Before the authorities published the death toll from the fire, families of some political detainees took to social media to call on the authorities to ensure the safety of prisoners at Evin, which in 2018 was blacklisted by the U.S. government for “serious human rights abuses”.

Iranian authorities said on Saturday that a prison workshop had been set on fire “after a fight among a number of prisoners convicted of financial crimes and theft”. Evin holds many detainees facing security charges, including Iranians with dual nationality.

The footage of Evin aired on state television hours later showed firefighters inspecting a workshop with fire damage to the roof. It also showed inmates in their wards apparently “sleeping as calm has been restored”.

Atena Daemi, a human rights activist, said that relatives of prisoners held in the women’s section had gathered at the prison for routine visiting hours, but that the authorities had denied them access, resulting in a standoff.

The relatives were told that the prisoners were “fine, but the phones are broken”, according to Daemi.

“When the families said they would not leave until they (prisoners) call, give them mobile phones to call, security guards confronted the families,” she tweeted.

In the footage broadcast on state television, a prison official said inmates had been allowed to contact their families.

A lawyer representing an American Iranian held at Evin, Siamak Namazi, imprisoned for nearly seven years on espionage-related charges rejected by Washington as baseless, said on Sunday that Namazi had indeed contacted his relatives.

Several other dual national Iranians and foreign citizens are held in Evin prison mostly for security-related charges. “I am pleased to report that #SiamakNamazi has now spoken to his family. He is safe and has been moved to a secure area of Evin Prison. We have no further details at this time,” Jared Genser said in a tweet.

Namazi had returned to Evin on Wednesday after being granted a brief furlough, Genser said.

Violent crackdown

Asked about the prison fire, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters during a campaign trip on Saturday to Portland, Oregon that the Iranian government was “so oppressive” and that he was surprised by the courage of the Iranian protesters.

Iran’s foreign ministry said Biden had interfered in state matters by showing support for the anti-government protests. The authorities have responded with a brutal crackdown.

Rights groups said at least 240 protesters had been killed in the anti-government protests, including 32 minors. Over 8,000 people had been arrested in 111 cities and towns, Iranian activist news agency HRANA said on Saturday.

Among the casualties have been teenage girls whose deaths have become a rallying cry for more demonstrations across the country.

Iran, which has blamed the violence on enemies at home and abroad, deny security forces have killed protesters. State media said on Saturday at least 26 members of the security forces had been killed by “rioters”.

The protests have attracted international condemnation, with the United States, Canada and some European countries imposing sanctions on Iranian officials and organisations “involved in the clampdown on protesters”.

“On Saturday … Biden interfered in Iran’s state matters by supporting the riots … In recent days, the U.S. administration has tried desperately to inflame unrest in Iran under various excuses,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said, ISNA reported.

The protests mark one of the boldest challenges to clerical rule since the 1979 revolution, with demonstrations spreading across the country and widespread calls for the downfall the Islamic Republic, even if the unrest does not seem close to toppling the system.

 

The circumstances around Amini’s death in custody remain vague with her family and Iranian authorities offering contradictory versions.

The 22-year-old Iranian woman died on September 16, three days after her arrest by Iran’s notorious morality police for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

An official Iranian forensic investigation found Amini had died of a longstanding illness rather than reported beatings.

Her family has denied the official version, stressing that their daughter was in perfect health and had died of a violent blow to the head. They have filed a complaint against security officers involved in her arrest and detention.

Amini’s death sparked mass protests spearheaded by women taking to the streets chanting, “Zan, zendegi, azadi!” – women, life, freedom.

Young women, university students and even schoolgirls have since taken off their hijabs and faced off with security forces in the biggest wave of social unrest to grip Iran in almost three years.

At least 108 people, including 28 children, have been killed and hundreds more detained and held mostly in adult prisons, according to human rights groups.

The unrest has been particularly marked in Amini’s western home province of Kurdistan as well as in the southeastern city of Zahedan, where demonstrations have erupted against a police officer accused of rape in a separate case.

Khamenei accuses ‘enemies’ of stoking ‘riots

Gunshots were fired as Iranian security forces confronted protesters in the cities of Isfahan and Karaj and in Amini’s hometown Saqez, in videos shared by two Norway-based human rights organisations.

“Death to the dictator,” shouted female students who had defiantly taken off their mandatory hijab headscarves as they marched down a Tehran street, in a video verified by AFP.

Shots were heard in Isfahan amid the “nationwide protests and strikes”, Iran Human Rights (IHR) said of a video it tweeted, and in Saqez, according to the Kurdish rights group Hengaw, which reported that later “the security forces fled”.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday again accused Iran’s “enemies” of stoking “street riots”.

“The actions of the enemy, such as propaganda, trying to influence minds, creating excitement, encouraging and even teaching the manufacture of incendiary devices are now completely clear,” he said.

The ISNA news agency reported a heavy security presence in the capital and demonstrations, including at Tehran University where police intervened “to restore order, without resorting to violence”.

‘Bloody crackdown’ feared

Activists in Tehran have called for protesters to turn out “in solidarity with the people of Sanandaj and the heroic people of Zahedan”.

“We don’t want spectators. Come and join us,” a group of mainly young women outside Tehran’s Azad University sang in IHR footage verified by AFP.

A man who asked not to be identified told the BBC: “The atmosphere is quite tense and yet it is exciting. People are hopeful this time and we hope that a real change is just around the corner. I don’t think people are willing to give up this time. 

“You can hear some sort of protest everywhere, almost every night. That feels good, that feels really good.”

IHR said the security forces had so far killed at least 108 people, and at least another 93 people in Zahedan, while warning of an “impending bloody crackdown” in Kurdistan.

It also said workers had joined protest strikes this week at the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the southwest, Abadan in the west and Bushehr in the south.

In its widening crackdown, Iran has blocked access to social media, including Instagram and WhatsApp, and launched a campaign of mass arrests.