Other videos showed protesters chanting “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Khamenei – in the central city of Isfahan; “Long live the shah” in the northern city of Babol, and “Don’t be afraid, we are all together” in the north-western city of Tabriz.

In the western city of Dezful, footage sent to BBC Persian showed a large crowd of protesters and also security personnel appearing to open fire from a central square.

The evening protests came not long after Reza Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution and lives in Washington DC, had called on Iranians to “take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands”.

In a post on X, Pahlavi said “millions of Iranians demanded their freedom tonight”, describing the protesters as his “courageous compatriots”.

He thanked US President Donald Trump for holding the “regime to account”, and called on European leaders to do the same.

Pahlavi has also called for protests to continue from 20:00 local time (16:30 GMT) on Friday night.

Iranian state media downplayed the scale of Thursday’s unrest. In some cases, they denied protests had taken place altogether, posting videos of empty streets.

Meanwhile, internet watchdog NetBlocks said its metrics showed that Iran was “in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout”.

“The incident follows a series of escalating digital censorship measures targeting protests across the country and hinders the public’s right to communicate at a critical moment,” it warned, referring to previous losses of connectivity in several cities.

Earlier in the day, footage from Lomar, a small town in the western province of Ilam, showed a crowd chanting “Cannons, tanks, fireworks, mullahs must go” – a reference to the clerical establishment. Another showed people throwing papers into the air outside a bank that appeared to have been broken into.

Other videos showed many shuttered shops in a number of predominantly Kurdish cities and towns in Ilam, as well as Kermanshah and Lorestan provinces.

It followed a call for a general strike by exiled Kurdish opposition groups in response to the deadly crackdown on protests in the region.

At least 17 protesters have been killed by security forces in Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan during the unrest, and many of them have been members of the Kurdish or Lor ethnic minorities, according to Kurdish human rights group Hengaw.

On Wednesday, there were violent clashes between protesters and security forces in several cities and towns in western Iran, as well as other regions.

IHR said it had been the deadliest day of the unrest, with 13 protesters confirmed to have been killed across the country.

“The evidence shows that the scope of crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day,” said the group’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

Hengaw said two protesters were shot dead by security forces in Khoshk-e Bijar, in the northern province of Gilan, on Wednesday night.

Iran’s semi-official news agency Fars, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, reported that three police officers were also killed on Wednesday.

It said two were shot dead by armed individuals among a group of “rioters” in the south-western town of Lordegan, and the third was stabbed to death “during efforts to control unrest” in Malard country, west of Tehran.

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