| TEHRAN, March 28 (AFP)
Protesters went on the rampage in the southern city of Lamerd, burning portraits of the clerical regime's leadership
after violent clashes with security forces, the Kayhan paper said
Wednesday.
The conservative daily said Tuesday's incidents, in which demonstrators
also set fire to government offices and occupied the local airport, intensified after anti-riot police opened fire with tear gas to restore
order.
"The intervention did not calm demonstrators but instead enraged them,
causing major damage to buildings and public property," it said, adding rioters burned holy books as well as portraits of Islamic Iran's founder,
the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
They also set fire to portraits of his successor, current supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as President Mohammad Khatami, it said.
Residents of Lamerd, in the southern province of Fars, have reportedly been protesting plans to build a gas refining plant in nearby Mohr instead
of in Lamerd as originally scheduled.
Another conservative daily, Jomhuri Eslami, said two Hercules C-130 transport planes carrying anti-riot forces had been sent to Lamerd as a
precaution against any further unrest.
An interior ministry official cited by the state news agency IRNA earlier
Wednesday confirmed that demonstrators had set local government offices ablaze and blocked roads in the city with burning tyres during Tuesday's
clashes.
He said protesters had acted "under the impetus of influential people in
the region" whom he did not specify and cautioned that they would be "severely punished."
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