Iran: An Iranian woman who set herself ablaze in Paris yesterday, during a protest against a mass round-up of left-wing Iranian exiles in France, died last night.
Ms Marzieh Babakhani, aged about 40, was rushed to hospital with severe burns after joining about 100 exiles protesting at an Interior Ministry office near the Eiffel Tower and then setting herself on fire, witnesses said.
"We condemn the shameful deal with the mullahs," the crowd chanted, accusing France of staging the raids as a favour to the Islamic republic.
Tehran has long called for a crackdown on the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), whose Paris region offices were raided on Tuesday.
The Paris demonstration was the third dramatic protest in Europe against Tuesday's sudden sweep in which 159 Iranian exiles, including their leader, Mr Maryam Rajavi, were detained and $2.8 million in $100 bills were seized. Police said they were still counting more money found in several suitcases.
On Tuesday, a man set himself on fire outside the French consulate in London. Exiles pelted the Iranian consulate in Hamburg with stones and fruit and four forced their way into the building, wrecking furniture and spray-painting slogans on walls.
The NCRI said the Paris detainees had begun an indefinite hunger strike to protest against the crackdown.
In Tehran hundreds of Iranians demanding more freedom demonstrated for the eighth consecutive night. Scores of protesters were arrested and some injured in rallies in seven cities.
Protesters in Tehran, wary of possible beatings from hardline Islamic vigilantes, kept to their cars and sounded their horns in traffic jams around the city's university - the focus of the unrest.
The official IRNA news agency reported protests in six other cities in which scores were arrested and several injured. But numbers taking part in the demonstrations, among the largest and most violent for four years, appeared to be dwindling.
Tension was lower in Tehran, apparently due to the intervention of uniformed police who protected students from attacks by Islamic vigilantes and arrested some vigilante leaders.
"Confronting the plainclothes and wilful people has started, some of them have been arrested and it will continue," the Intelligence Minister, Mr Ali Yunesi, said, quoted by IRNA, referring to arrests of hardline vigilantes.
Iran's government and most parliamentary deputies accused Washington of blatant interference in Iran's internal affairs.Hardline clerics say they have detected a US-inspired plot.
"America has pinned its hope on the unrest, but learned very quickly that it is making a mistake," Mr Yunesi said.
Demonstrators said they were not there for Washington. "If coming to the streets will give me more freedom, I don't care who calls for it, I will come here and tell all my friends to come with me," a high school student named Amir said.
Protesters have expressed anger at moderate President Muhammad Khatami as well as unelected conservative clerics, who have blocked his efforts to reform Iran's "Islamic democracy". - (Reuters)