Ownership battle for ’79 revolution

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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The rift in Iran widened Sunday after state media reported at least 10 more deaths during post-election unrest and said authorities had arrested five relatives of ex-President Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the country’s most powerful men.

The opposition has stepped up its challenge to the country's Islamic rulers, with defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi firing off an unprecedented criticism of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after a day of deadly violence in Tehran.

The latest reports brought the official death toll for a week of confrontations to at least 19. State television inside Iran said 10 were killed and 100 injured in clashes Saturday between demonstrators contesting the result of the June 12 election and black-clad police wielding truncheons, tear gas and water cannons. Thousands of Mousavi supporters, who claim he won the election, squared off Saturday against security forces in a show of defiance against Khamenei.

Underscoring how the protesters have become emboldened despite the regime's repeated and ominous warnings, witnesses said some shouted "Death to Khamenei!" at Saturday's demonstrations Ğ another sign of once-unthinkable challenges to the virtually limitless authority of the country's most powerful figure. Iran's regime continued to impose a blackout on the country's most serious internal conflict since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But fresh allegations of brutality emerged as Iranians at home and abroad sought to shed light on a week of resistance to both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

According to the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, security forces arrested scores of injured protestors at hospitals as they sought treatment after the clashes.

"The arrest of citizens seeking care for wounds suffered at the hands of security forces when they attempted to exercise rights guaranteed under their own constitution and international law is deplorable," campaign spokesman Hadi Ghaemi told the Associated Press.

But Iranian leaders lashed out at Western nations, foreign media and the exiled opposition, accusing Britain and the United States of meddling in its affairs. World leaders have voiced mounting alarm over the unrest and raised concerns over the future of the oil-rich Shiite Muslim powerhouse. Ahmadinejad bluntly told the United States and Britain to stop interfering after Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki accused London of plotting for the past two years to sabotage the election.

"By making hasty comments, you will not have a place in the circle of the Iranian nation's friends. Therefore, I recommend you to correct your interfering positions," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse.