Iranian police arrested several "security violators" during the protest

Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported that police had arrested a number of “security violators” during a protest amid a declining lake in the country’s northwest.

“A number of violent and hypocritical individuals were identified and arrested, who had no other purpose than to destroy public property and violate the safety of residents,” said Rahim Jahanbakhsh, police chief of West Azerbaijan Province.

And last Saturday, the Fars news agency reported that “dozens took to the streets in the cities of Nakda and Orumiya to protest the authorities’ inattention to the drying up of Lake Urmia,” explaining that they chanted slogans including “Lake Urmia is dying, and Parliament gives the order: “Killing her” and “Lake Urmia is thirsty,” according to Agence France-Presse.

The level of Lake Urmia, located in the mountainous area between the cities of Tabriz and Urmia, began to decline since 1995, after it began to be considered one of the largest hypersaline lakes in the world, and water from 13 rivers flows into the lake, a wetland area of ​​international importance according to with the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed in 1971 under the auspices of the UN.

Source: AFP

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