TEHRAN, June 18: At least 170 people were arrested during sporadic clashes in Tehran on Tuesday night and several other Iranian cities, as anti-government protests went into their eighth consecutive night.

Unrest involving security forces and a limited number of “agitators” — accused of exploiting the student-led protests — were reported by the official news agency in the western city of Kermanshah, Tabriz in the northwest, Yazd in the centre, and the northeastern holy city of Mashhad.

In Kermanshah, a group of “hooligans” were accused of hijacking a rally on Tuesday by students at the city’s Razi university and pelting police with stones.

Several people were wounded and a number were arrested.

“Agitators” in Karaj, a satellite city to the west of Tehran, broke the windows of a bank and a drugstore in separate incidents on Tuesday night and early Wednesday, with several anti-riot police and people wounded.

Police in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, also reported that about 30 people were arrested in unrest, while police in the central city of Yazd made 50 arrests of “agitators” and 90 people were detained in Tabriz.

Deputy Interior Minister Ali Asghar Ahmadi, quoted by the student news agency, ISNA, said small clashes erupted in the central city of Isfahan and Shiraz in the south, where a protester was killed last week in unclear circumstances.

The unrest broke out last Tuesday after a brief gathering by students at Tehran University’s dormitories to protest plans to privatize some university facilities quickly transformed into virulent anti-government demonstrations.

Scores of people have been injured or detained over the past week of anti-government protests, the first in six months and which come amid a worsening political deadlock between reformists loyal to President Mohammad Khatami and powerful conservative hardliners.

However, calm has largely returned to the campus and surrounding area, after police turned their attention to “extremist” protesters and hardline vigilantes trying to silence them.

On Tuesday night, thousands of anti-government demonstrators converged on the area around Tehran University in their cars, but police appeared well in control of the situation.

No clashes were reported in the centre of the capital.

Demonstrations around the campus — the focal point of the protests — have turned low-key since the weekend, with few people venturing out of their vehicles or shouting slogans.

But there was an “angry demonstration” in Tehran Pars, a district in the east of the sprawling city, that apparently broke out after a police swoop on owners of satellite television equipment.

The agency said the clashes erupted after members of the hardline Ansar Hezbollah group — which has also been targeted by police in recent days — intervened in a bid to break up the demonstration.

Another small protest was reported in a district to the west of Tehran.

The protests have been marked by slogans targeting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the tensions in Tehran have been eased by a police crackdown on the activities of the hardline Basij and Ansar Hezbollah militias. —AFP