Iran: Continuous Chemical Gas Attacks Spark More Protests, Outrage – OpEd

Regime operatives across Iran are continuing and expanding their latest wave of chemical gas attacks targeting innocent schoolgirls. Dozens of students have been transferred to hospitals to receive urgent medical care for poisonings. These attacks are leading to a surge in protests by the Iranian people and outrage among the public over the atrocities of the mullahs’ dictatorship and their enmity against the country’s population.

People throughout Iran continue to specifically hold the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responsible for their miseries, while also condemning the oppressive the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and paramilitary Basij units, alongside other security units that are on the ground suppressing the peaceful demonstrators.

Protests in Iran have to this day expanded to at least 282 cities. Over 750 people have been killed and more than 30,000 are arrested by the regime’s forces, according to sources of Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The names of 675 killed protesters have been published by the PMOI/MEK.

MEK Resistance Units portrayed a large image of Iranian Resistance Leader Massoud Rajavi and opposition coalition NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi in the city of Rasht, northern Iran, near the Imam Reza Complex at 10:30 pm local time on Monday night.

Reports indicate the all-girls Khadijeh Kobra High School in the city of Oshnavieh, northwest Iran, has been targeted in a chemical gas attack by regime operatives on Tuesday, according to the Hengaw Human Rights Organization. A number of the students are suffering from poisoning, the report adds.

Other chemical gas attacks on Tuesday are being reported from:

• The all-girls Fahmideh School and the Laleh & Effat Elementary School in Kamyaran of Kurdistan Province, western Iran
• The all-boys Amir Kabir School, the all-girls Al-Yasin School, the all-girls Hazrate Masoumeh School, the all-girls Masoud Bagheri School, the Saeed Ansar Elementary School, the Ahmad Masoudpour High School, and the all-girls Manouchehr Ansari Schoolin Shahin Shahr of Isfahan Province, central Iran
• The “Islamic Republic School” in Tabriz, northwest Iran
• The all-girls Farzanegan and Vali Asr high schools in Urmia, northwest Iran
• The all-girls Shayan School in Isfahan, central Iran
• The all-girls Maryam School and the the all-girls Shima Moradi Elementary School in Kermanshah, western Iran
• The all-girls Hazrate Zeynab School in Bandar Ganaveh, southern Iran
• The all-girls Kamal Dehghan School in Karaj, west of Tehran, Iran
• The all-girls Ahmadiyeh School in Borujerd, western Iran
• A number of schools in the Parsabad district of Moghan, northeast Iran
• The Be’sat School in Shahriar of Tehran Province
• The Atieh Sazan School of District 3 in Tehran

A chemical gas attack targeting the all-girls “Danesh Pezhuhan School” in Kermanshah, western Iran, has left at least 60 students poisoned, according to the Hengaw Human Rights Organization. They were transferred to nearby medical centers and two of the poisoned students are reported to be in critical conditions.

In the city of Kamyaran of Kurdistan Province, students are reporting that they smelled “something similar to rotten eggs” at a school targeted in today’s organized chemical gas attacks. A number of students have been hospitalized in this city.

Regime operatives launched yet another a chemical gas attack in Shahin Shahr, this time targeting the Tolu High School. Officials had the gates closed for an hour or so following the chemical gas attack, according to students at the scene. No ambulance came to the school to provide help and the regime’s Red Crescent officials did nothing. The students say only the teachers were helping the students to flee the scene and afterwards officials were keeping a number of the senior teachers inside the school.

Further reports from locals in Shahin Shahr indicate that all the city’s hospitals and medical centers are packed with students poisoned in today’s chemical gas attacks. These facilities are running critically short on oxygen tanks for their patients. At least ten schools in city alone have been targeted in chemical gas attacks by regime operatives today.

Iranian opposition coalition NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi condemned the regime’s “cruelty and demagoguery” as the mullahs continue their campaign aimed at silencing the Iranian people and quelling their nationwide uprising.

“Today, the clerical regime has launched more chemical attacks on innocent schoolgirls in multiple cities, including Shahinshahr, Kermanshah, Isfahan, Urmia, Tabriz, and Bandar Genaveh. The regime’s depravity in continuing this horrific crime is especially appalling given the holy month of Ramadan and the commemoration of Imam Ali’s (PBUH) martyrdom. Khamenei, the mullahs’ bloodthirsty supreme leader, has crossed a new threshold of cruelty and demagoguery in his desperate attempt to stifle dissent and prevent Iran protests. However, his efforts will be in vain, for Iranian women, girls, and youth have vowed to rise up against this brutal regime and overthrow it,” the NCRI President-elect explained.

More than 1,300 students and school faculty have been to various hospitals with signs of poisonings, according to the regime’s E’temad daily. “However, there has yet to be a single official pathology report, or a samples report from schools from the Passive Defense officials, or even a single official report from the numerous committees that have been tasked to look into this matter,” the piece adds.

In the city of Saqqez, where regime operatives concentrated most of their recent chemical gas attacks yesterday, people took to the streets on Monday night to protests these poisonings and devastating measures. The mullahs are deliberately targeting all-girls schools with such attacks to maintain the country’s restive population focused on these matters and prevent a new rise in anti-regime protests. Although it goes without saying that there is significant risk in this regard as these chemical gas attacks can result in a new eruption of anger among the Iranian people.

Contract workers in the Salman Farsi Special Petrochemical Site in the city of Sarbandar, southwest Iran, were protesting the officials’ refusal to increase their pay and went on strike today.

On Monday morning store-owners and bazaar merchants in the city of Saqqez went on strike to protest these recent poisonings. Reports indicate that teachers and students were boycotting their classes in this city in an act of protest following the regime’s systematic targeting of schools with chemical gas attacks and poisonings.

Authorities in Saqqez stationed anti-riot units outside the local governor’s office as concerns among regime officials are escalating about popular protests over the ongoing chemical gas attacks.

The protests in Iran began following the death of Mahsa Amini. Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old woman from the city of Saqqez in Kurdistan Province, western Iran, who traveled to Tehran with her family, was arrested on Tuesday, September 13, at the entry of Haqqani Highway by the regime’s so-called “Guidance Patrol” and transferred to the “Moral Security” agency.

She was brutally beaten by the morality police and died of her wounds in a Tehran hospital on September 16. The event triggered protests that quickly spread across Iran and rekindled the people’s desire to overthrow the regime.

Mahmoud Hakamian writes for PMOI/MEK