Iranian police have clashed with mourners at a memorial service in Isfahan for dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, arresting more than 50 people.
Hundreds of police and security force members surrounded the Seyed mosque and prevented mourners from entering, sparking fierce clashes, opposition websites claimed.
The mourners were shouting slogans in support of Iran’s opposition Green Movement and police fired tear gas to disperse them, according to website Rahesabz.net.
‘Security forces are beating people including women and children with batons, chains and stones,’ it claimed, adding that ‘so far several have been arrested and many were injured.’
Parlemannews.ir, the website of Iran's reformist minority faction in parliament, said that ‘over 50 people, including four reporters, were arrested in clashes.’
The latest crackdown on the opposition comes a day after its major leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was sacked from his post as president of the Academy of Art, which the architect and painter had headed for ten years.
The Grand Ayatollah, a fierce critic of the clerical regime he helped create and a vocal backer of the opposition, died aged 87 on Saturday.
His funeral in the holy city of Qom on Monday saw hundreds of thousands of mourners pour onto the streets, effectively turning the ceremony into a massive anti-government protest, which ended in clashes between police and mourners.
Wednesday's memorial service in Isfahan, where the cleric had many followers, was to be led by prominent reformist cleric Ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri.
