Iranian security forces opened fire on protesters who massed in their thousands in Mahsa Amini's hometown to mark 40 days since her death, a human rights group said.
"Security forces have shot tear gas and opened fire on people in Zindan square, Saqez city," Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran's Kurdish regions, tweeted without specifying whether there were any dead or wounded.
Despite heightened security measures, columns of mourners had poured into Saqez in the western Kurdistan province to pay tribute to Ms Amini at her grave at the end of the traditional mourning period.
Ms Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, died on 16 September, three days after her arrest in Tehran by the notorious morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code for women.
Anger flared at her funeral last month and quickly sparked the biggest wave of protests to rock the Islamic republic in almost three years.
Young women have led the charge, burning their hijab headscarves and confronting security forces.
"Death to the dictator" mourners chanted at the Aichi cemetery outside Saqez, before many were seen heading to the governor's office in the city centre.
Iran's Fars news agency said around 2,000 people gathered in Saqez and chanted "woman, life, freedom".
But thousands more were seen making their way in cars, on motorbikes and on foot along a motorway, through fields and even across a river, in videos widely shared online by activists and rights groups.
Noisily clapping, shouting and honking car horns, mourners packed the highway linking Saqez to the cemetery 8km away, in images that Hengaw told AFP it had verified.
Hengaw said strikes were under way in Saqez as well as Divandarreh, Marivan, Kamyaran and Sanandaj, and in Javanrud and Ravansar in the western province of Kermanshah.
The Norway-based rights group said Iranian football stars Ali Daei and Hamed Lak had travelled to Saqez "to take part in the 40th day" service.
They had been staying at the Kurd Hotel but were "taken to the government guesthouse ... under guard by the security forces", it said.
Mr Daei has previously run into trouble with authorities over his online support for the Amini protests.
Kurdistan governor Esmail Zarei-Kousha said the situation in Saqez was calm and dismissed as "completely false" reports that roads into the city had been shut.
"The enemy and its media ... are trying to use the 40-day anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death as a pretext to cause new tensions but fortunately the situation in the province is completely stable," he said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.
Hengaw said most of Saqez was "empty" as so many people had left the city to join the ceremony to commemorate Ms Amini.
Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said the security forces' crackdown on the Amini protests has claimed the lives of at least 141 demonstrators, in an updated death toll yesterday.
Amnesty International says the "unrelenting brutal crackdown" has killed at least 23 children, while IHR said at least 29 children have been slain.
More than five weeks after Ms Amini's death, the demonstrations show no signs of ending. They have been fuelled by public outrage over the crackdown that has claimed the lives of other young women and girls.
Iran's Forensic Organisation said in a report this month that Ms Amini's death "was not caused by blows to the head and vital organs and limbs of the body".
But lawyers acting for her family have rejected the findings and called for a re-examination of her death by another commission.
Iran has announced sanctions targeting individuals and media outlets in the European Union, in retaliation for the bloc's punitive measures imposed last week on the morality police and other officials over the crackdown.
Iran charges over 1,000 since Amini protests - judiciary
Iran's judiciary has said that it has pressed charges against over 300 people in connection to nationwide protests over Ms Amini's death, bringing the total to more than 1,000 indictments.
Charges have been filed against more than 300 people over demonstrations in the northwestern provinces of Zanjan and West Azerbaijan and northeastern Semnan, the judiciary's Mizan Online website said.
The judiciary announced on Monday indictments against 201 "rioters" in the Alborz province near Tehran, adding to more than 630 recent charges against protesters in Tehran, Kurdistan, Khuzestan, Qazvin and Isfahan.
At least four people were charged with an offence that can carry the death penalty, while others accused of "acting against the country's security", "propaganda" against the regime and "assaulting security forces".
Meanwhile, internet access has been blocked for "security reasons" in Saqez, the hometown of Ms Amini, according to local media.
"Following the tensions and scattered confrontations that occurred after the ceremony [mourning period], the internet connection was cut in the town of Saqez for security reasons," the ISNA news agency said.
The US has today targeted Iranian officials, including those overseeing Tehran's Evin prison and others, in new sanctions over internet censorship and a crackdown on protests.
"We will continue to find ways to support the people of Iran as they peacefully protest in defence of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and in doing so, will continue to impose costs on individuals and entities in Iran who engage in the brutal repression of the Iranian people," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
