4 Dead in Iranian protest

Iranian security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters in the capital on Sunday, killing at least four people in the fiercest clashes in months, opposition Web sites and witnesses said.
Thousands of opposition supporters chanting "Death to the dictator", a reference to hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defied official warnings of a harsh crackdown on any protests coinciding with Sunday's religious observance of Ashoura.
Police had blocked streets leading to the centre of the capital to try to prevent thousands of people from joining the protest. Still, many opposition supporters managed to break the security wall.
The security forces tried but failed to disperse the protesters with tear gas, charges by baton-wielding officers and warning shots fired into the air.
They then opened fire directly at protesters, killing at least four people, according to witnesses and the pro-reform Web site Rah-e-Sabz.
Amateur videos accessed in London via YouTube purported to show pandemonium on Engelab (Revolution) street as motorcycles belonging to riot police burned after being set on fire by protesters.
The mobile phone cameras then moved further along the same street to show a crowd of protesters purportedly attacking two police officers, while other demonstrators try to protect the officers.
Many of the demonstrators seen in the video are heard chanting "I will kill the one who killed our brother", a slogan from the time of the Iranian revolution.
Reporters from foreign media organisations were barred from covering the demonstrations and the reports of deaths could not be independently confirmed.
Because of the restrictions, AP Television could not independently verify the content of the amateur videos. Fierce clashes also broke out between security forces and opposition supporters in the cities of Isfahan and Najafabad in central Iran, according to the Rah-e-Sabz Web site.
Mobile phone services were down and Internet connections were slowed to a crawl, as happened during most other days of opposition protest, in an apparent government attempt to limit attention on the events. Sunday's clashes marked the bloodiest confrontation between protesters and security forces since the height of the unrest in the weeks after June's disputed presidential election.
The opposition says Ahmadinejad won the June election through massive vote fraud and that its leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was the true winner.
Opposition activists have held a series of anti-government protests since the death of a dissident cleric last week.
The 20 December death of the 87-year-old Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a sharp critic of Iran's leaders, gave a new push to opposition protests, which have endured despite a heavy security crackdown since the election.
His memorials brought out not only the young, urban activists who filled the ranks of earlier protests, but also older, more religious Iranians who revered Montazeri on grounds of faith as much as politics.