Iran tensions mount as students protest ahead of Mahsa Amini ceremony

Iranian students protested Tuesday at multiple universities, defying a bloody crackdown as tensions mount on the eve of planned ceremonies marking 40 days since Mahsa Amini's death.

"A student may die but will not accept humiliation," they chanted at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, in an online video verified by AFP.

Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, died three days after being taken into custody by the notorious morality police on September 13 while visiting Tehran with her younger brother.

Wednesday marks 40 days since Amini's death and the end of the traditional mourning period in Iran.

- 'Attacked, strip-searched, beaten' -

"Students of the Sadr high school in Tehran have been attacked, strip-searched and beaten up," said the 1500tasvir social media channel.

"Parents later protested in front of the school. Security forces attacked the neighbourhood and shot at people's houses," it added.

"The death of a student in this confrontation is strongly denied," a ministry spokesman said, quoted by Iran's ISNA news agency.

Such reports have fuelled further anger among the Iranian public over the crackdown that the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said, in an updated toll Tuesday, had cost the lives of at least 141 protesters, up from 122 previously.

Deadly unrest has rocked especially Amini's western home province of Kurdistan -- but also Zahedan on Iran's far southeast, where IHR said 93 people were killed in demonstrations that erupted on September 30 over the reported rape of a teenage girl by a police commander.

Despite what rights group Amnesty International has called an "unrelenting brutal crackdown", young women and men were again seen protesting in online videos on Tuesday.

Students heckled the spokesman for ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi as he addressed Tehran's Khaje Nasir University, in a video published by the reformist paper Hammihan.

Teachers observed a strike around the country on Sunday and Monday over the crackdown, and another work stoppage was said to be underway in Kurdistan on Tuesday.

The security forces have also mounted a campaign of mass arrests of protesters and their supporters, including academics, journalists and even pop stars.