The heads of the executive, legislative and judicial authorities in Iran called on state agencies to confront "chaos" and riots, and several Iranian universities witnessed protest gatherings, coinciding with demonstrations in several Western cities against the background of the death of the girl, Mahsa Amini, at the hands of the police.
Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi held a meeting with the heads of parliament and the judiciary, where the three presidents called on state agencies to confront what they described as chaos and riots, and to protect public security and public property in the country.
The meeting stressed the need for the Iranian media and elites to perform their duties in clarifying the "enemy's plots."
Today, Sunday, the Iranian parliament is scheduled to hold a closed meeting to discuss the protests taking place in the country.
Demonstrations and arrests
Posts on social media showed gatherings in a number of major cities, including Tehran, Isfahan, Rasht and Shiraz.
In Tehran's commercial Bazaar district, protesters chanted, "We will be killed one by one if we do not unite," while elsewhere in the capital they blocked a main road with a wire fence.
Activists reported that the authorities arrested dozens of Tehran University students on Saturday, and Fars News Agency said that some protesters were arrested in a square near the university.
Fars news agency also reported that about 400 students at the University of Isfahan in the center of the country staged a protest on the university's campus on Saturday, denouncing the police's handling of the protesters.
The agency added that the students chanted "sharp" slogans and other slogans calling for women's freedom, without rioting inside the university.
Fars news agency reported that the students tried to move the demonstration outside the university, but police forces prevented them using tear gas.
The protesters said they will not participate in the classes until the detained students are released.
Iranian websites also said that shop owners in the Shush area, south of Tehran, and in the city of Diwan Dora in the Kurdistan province in the west of the country, carried out a strike to protest the death of the young woman, Mahsa.
Meanwhile, the authorities arrested singer Sherwin Hajipour, after he published a song in support of the protests, in addition to a number of athletes for supporting the protests.
Amnesty International stated that the government's crackdown on the demonstrations has so far killed at least 52 people and injured hundreds, while activists say that the authorities have arrested dozens.
Part of a large demonstration in Trafalgar Square in London (Getty Images)
global protests
On the global level, Saturday, thousands of people demonstrated in London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Athens, San Francisco, New York, and other Western cities, in solidarity with the Iranian demonstrators, and some of them carried pictures of Mahsa, who died 3 days after her arrest by the police.
In London, about 2,500 people, mostly Kurds, participated in a protest in Trafalgar Square, waving Iranian and Kurdish flags.
More than two weeks ago, protests erupted over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman from the Iranian Kurdistan region, after her death was announced 3 days after she was detained by the "moral police" in Tehran because of her "improper clothes".