Eight protest leaders arrested in Iran at rallies over death of Mahsa Amini

A commander of the Iranian special police has said eight women leaders were detained at protests over the death of 22-year-old Kurdish ethnic woman Mahsa Amini.

"So far, we have had more than eight arrests of women leaders and 10 instances of dispersing people who decided to invite other people to gather, and we were able to convince them to leave the scene by talking to them," Colonel Heydari told the Mehr news agency on September 21.

He said that the all-female unit of the special police was established specifically to arrest women "disrupting order and security" and it carried out its first official mission targeting protests on September 20.

The unit's main task is to arrest individuals at protests that men of the special unit could not arrest due to the observance of the Islamic law standards

Iran has seen protests erupt nationwide over the death of Amini following her arrest by the morality police for allegedly not observing the Islamic dress code, hijab.

Street protests are continuing five days after the death of a young Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who died in the custody of the morality police for not observing the Islamic dress code.

Access to Instagram which has over 40 million users in Iran has also been restricted in the country. Other popular social media networks such Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have been banned since the 2009 riots in Iran.

Six protesters, one police officer were killed and several wounded in the protests since September 16.  

The Iranian authorities often describe anti-government protests as riots organised by agents of foreign powers and opposition groups.