ATHENS, April 4 -- Iranian police opened fire on demonstrators in a suburban district southwest of Tehran Tuesday, killing at least one person and injuring several others, reports from Tehran said. The Kuwaiti News Agency, in a dispatch from Tehran, said 'a number of protesters were killed' and several injured when police opened fire on a crowd blocking the main street in the Islamshahr district southwest of Tehran. An Iranian exile group, in a statement faxed to Athens, said nine people were killed when Islamic revolutionary guards exchanged fire with demonstrators, who had earlier attacked a police station and seized weapons in the building. The official Islamic Republic News Agency said the demonstrators, protesting a water shortage in the area, smashed the windows of two banks in an area adjacent to Islamshahr. The demonstration 'turned into a wider protest against economic hardship, including a doubling of fuel prices last month,' a KUNA dispatch monitored in Athens said. A statement by the exiled Mojahedin Khalq Organization, an Iranian opposition group, said residents of the area 'staged a large-scale protest against the deteriorating economic conditions and the rise in the prices of public transportation.' 'Chanting anti-government slogans, the demonstrators attacked banks and petrol stations and set several of them on fire,' the statement said. Clashes between the demonstrators and security forces continued for four hours, it said. To prevent the trouble spreading, revolutionary guards 'armed with machine guns and other anti-riot equipment, blocked off the entire area, ' the Mojahedin statement said.
Tehran radio said similar demonstrations occurred in the area last month when a crowd assembled to protest a water shortage. 'Agitators among them attacked vehicles, public transport and other facilities, causing damage,' the state radio said. 'With the intervention of security forces, several agitators were arrested and handed over to the judicial authorities,' the broadcast said.
