Hackers put ayatollah in crosshairs on Iranian TV
Hackers supporting Iran's wave of female-led protests interrupted a state TV news broadcast with a mock-up of gun-sight crosshairs and flames over an image of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in footage widely shared online on Sunday. In other anti-regime messages, activists have spray-painted "Death to Khamenei" and "The police are the murderers of the people" on billboards in Tehran. "The blood of our youths is on your hands," read an on-screen message that flashed up briefly during the TV broadcast on Saturday evening, as street protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, again rocked Tehran and other cities. "Police forces used tear gas to disperse the crowds in dozens of locations in Tehran," state news agency IRNA reported, adding that the demonstrators "chanted slogans and set fire to and damaged public property, including a police booth". Anger has flared since the death of Amini on September 16, three days after she was arrested by the country's morality police for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women. "Join us and rise up," read another message in the TV hack claimed by the group Edalat-e Ali ("Ali's Justice"). It also posted pictures of Amini and three other women killed in a crackdown that has claimed at least 95 lives according to the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights. Another 90 people were killed in Iran's far southeast, in unrest on September 30 sparked by the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police chief in Sistan-Baluchestan province, according to IHR. One Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps member was killed Saturday in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, and a member of the IRGC's Basij paramilitary force died in Tehran from "a serious head injury following an armed attack by a mob," IRNA said. Those killings raised the death toll among security forces to 14. (AFP)