Iranian security forces have killed 72 people, including 56 in Kurdish regions, in the last week of cracking down on anti-regime demonstrations, the non-profit organization Iran Human Rights (IHR) said on Tuesday, AFP and News.ro reported.

The death toll has reached 416 since the protests began on September 16, following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested by morality police for violating a strict dress code that required women to wear the veil in public.

According to the Oslo-based IHR, 51 children and 21 women were among the dead.

Over the past seven days, most of the casualties have been recorded in Kurdish regions in western Iran, where Tehran has sent reinforcements due to escalating protests. From September 23, the army was directed against the protesters.

Demonstrations took place in several cities – Mahabadi, Javanrudi or Piranchahra – and were often associated with funeral ceremonies for people killed by the police.

The Iranian Kurdish rights group Hengaw, also based in Norway, accused the authorities of firing on the protesters. Hengau also claimed that five people were killed on Monday in Javanrod, where several thousand people had gathered to pay their respects to the victims.

NetBlocks, a London-based website that tracks internet blocking around the world, said internet access was blocked for “three and a half hours” on Monday amid protests and a World Cup soccer match when Iranian players did not sing the national anthem.

Last Friday, protesters set fire to the house where former Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, was born, a gesture some analysts saw as a symbolic rejection of the current regime.