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Iran Protesters Call For Three-Day Strike from Monday

People walk in a street on a rainy day in Tehran, Iran, 04 December 2022. (EPA)
People walk in a street on a rainy day in Tehran, Iran, 04 December 2022. (EPA)
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Iran Protesters Call For Three-Day Strike from Monday

People walk in a street on a rainy day in Tehran, Iran, 04 December 2022. (EPA)
People walk in a street on a rainy day in Tehran, Iran, 04 December 2022. (EPA)

Protesters in Iran called on Sunday a three-day strike this week as they seek to maintain pressure on authorities over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, with protests planned on the day President Ebrahim Raisi is due to address students in Tehran. 

Raisi is expected to visit Tehran University on Wednesday, celebrated in Iran as Student Day. 

To coincide with Student Day, protesters are calling for strikes by merchants and a rally towards Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) Square, according to individual posts shared on Twitter by accounts unverified by Reuters. 

They have also called for three days of boycotting any economic activity starting on Monday. 

Similar calls for strike action and mass mobilization have in past weeks resulted in an escalation in the unrest which has swept the country - some of the biggest anti-government protests since Iran's 1979 revolution 

The activist HRANA news agency said 470 protesters had been killed as of Saturday, including 64 minors. It said 18,210 demonstrators were arrested and 61 members of the security forces were killed. 

Iran's Interior Ministry state security council said on Saturday the death toll was 200, according to the judiciary's news agency Mizan. 

The nationwide protests began after Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, died in the custody of Iran's morality police on Sept. 16, after she was detained for violating the hijab restrictions governing how women dress. 

Residents posting on social media and newspapers such Shargh daily say there have been fewer sightings of the morality police on the streets in recent weeks as authorities apparently try to avoid provoking more protests. 

On Saturday, Iran's Public Prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was cited by the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency as saying that the morality police had been disbanded. 

"The same authority which has established this police has shut it down," Montazeri was quoted as saying. 

Iran's Interior Ministry, which is the authority in charge of the morality police, has yet to comment on the status of the force, which is tasked with monitoring Iranians' clothing and public behavior. 

Montazeri said the morality police was not under the judiciary's authority, which "continues to monitor behavioral actions at the community level." 

Top Iranian officials have repeatedly said Tehran would not change its mandatory hijab policy, nor the way it enforces this policy. 

Executions 

State media said four men convicted of cooperating with Israel's spy agency Mossad were executed on Sunday. 

They had been arrested in June - before the current unrest sweeping the country - following cooperation between the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards, Tasnim news agency reported. 

Tehran has long accused arch-enemy Israel of carrying out covert operations on its soil. Tehran has recently accused Israeli and Western intelligence services of plotting a civil war in Iran. 

Iranian state media reported on Wednesday that the country's Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence handed out to the four men "for the crime of cooperating with the intelligence services of the Zionist regime and for kidnapping". 

Three other people were handed prison sentences of between five and 10 years after being convicted of crimes that included acting against national security, aiding in kidnapping, and possessing illegal weapons, the Mehr news agency said.  

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Tropical Storm Adds to Philippines’ Weather Toll with 25 Dead and 278,000 Evacuated This Week 

Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
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Tropical Storm Adds to Philippines’ Weather Toll with 25 Dead and 278,000 Evacuated This Week 

Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)

A tropical storm was blowing across the Philippines' mountainous north Friday, worsening more than a week of bad weather that has caused at least 25 deaths and prompted evacuations in villages hit by flooding and landslides.

The storm was Typhoon Co-may when it blew Thursday night into the town of Agno in Pangasinan province with maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers (74 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 165 kph (102 mph). It was weakening as it advanced northeastward and had sustained winds of 85 kph (53 mph) Friday afternoon.

Co-may was intensifying seasonal monsoon rains that had swamped a large swath of the country for more than a week.

Disaster-response officials have received reports of at least 25 deaths since last weekend, mostly due to flash floods, toppled trees, landslides and electrocution. Eight other people were reported missing, they said.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries directly caused by Co-may, locally called Emong, the fifth weather disturbance to hit the Philippines since the rainy season started in last month. More than a dozen more tropical storms were expected to batter the Southeast Asian country the rest of the year, forecasters said.

The government shut down schools in metropolitan Manila for the third day Friday and suspended classes in 35 provinces in the main northern region of Luzon. More than 80 towns and cities, mostly in Luzon, have declared a state of calamity, a designation that speeds emergency funds and freezes the prices of commodities, including rice.

The days of stormy weather have forced 278,000 people to leave their homes for safety in emergency shelters or relatives’ homes. Nearly 3,000 houses have been damaged, the government’s disaster response agency said.

Travel by sea and air has been restricted in northern provinces being pounded or in the typhoon’s path.

Thousands of army forces, police, coast guard personnel. firefighters and civilian volunteers have been deployed to help rescue people in villages swamped in floodwaters or isolated due to roads blocked by landslides, fallen trees and boulders.

The United States said it will provide $250,000 in funding to the UN World Food Program to help the Philippine government's response. “We are tracking the devastation caused by the storms and floods and are deeply concerned for all those affected,” US Ambassador MaryKay Carlson said.

After returning from his White House meeting with US President Donald Trump, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. visited emergency shelters Thursday in Rizal province to help distribute food packs to displaced residents.

He later convened an emergency meeting with disaster-response officials, where he underscored the need for the government and the people to adapt to and brace for climate change and the larger number of and more unpredictable natural calamities it’s setting off.

“Everything has changed,” Marcos said. “Let’s not say, ‘The storm may come, what will happen?’ because the storm will really come.”

The United States, Manila’s longtime treaty ally, has pledged to provide military aircraft to airlift food and other aid to remote island provinces and the countryside if the calamity worsens, the Philippines military said.

The Philippines, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Seas, is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It’s often hit by earthquakes and has about two dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.