Tehran - Iranian authorities and a Kurdish rights group reported rising death tolls on Wednesday as internet curbs and restrictions on social media have been reported. Anger and demonstrations continued for the fifth day at the death in detention last week of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old from Iranian Kurdistan who was arrested in Tehran for "unsuitable attire".

Iranian media and a local prosecutor said four people were killed in the last two days, bringing the total death toll according to official sources to eight, including a member of the police and a pro-government militia member.

The protests, which were concentrated in Iran's Kurdish-populated northwestern regions have now spread to at least 50 cities and towns nationwide. The protests are the largest since a wave of demonstrations in 2019 over gasoline price rises.

Officials however denied that security forces have killed protesters, suggesting they may have been shot by armed dissidents.

Authorities are said to have restricted access to the internet, according to accounts from Kurdish rights group Hengaw, residents, and internet shutdown observatory NetBlocks.

NetBlocks and residents said access had been restricted to Instagram, the only major social media platform that Iran usually allows and which has millions of users, and that some mobile phone networks had been shut down.

WhatsApp users said they could only send text, not pictures, while Hengaw said access to the internet had been cut in Kurdistan province.

Amini's death unleashed anger over issues including freedoms in the Islamic Republic and an economy reeling from sanctions. Women have played a prominent role in the protests, waving and burning their veils, with some cutting their hair in public.

Amini fell into a coma while held by the morality police, who enforce strict rules in Iran requiring women to cover their hair and wear loose-fitting clothes in public. Her funeral was on Saturday.

Videos shared on social media have shown demonstrators damaging symbols of the Islamic Republic and confronting security forces.

One showed a man scaling the facade of the town hall in the northern city of Sari and tearing down an image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic after the 1979 revolution.
-Reuters