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A fire broke out at Iran’s notorious Evan prison, where the capital Tehran is holding political prisoners and anti-government activists.
Online video and local media reported the gunfire as protests across the country entered their fifth week.
Iran’s state-run IRNA, citing a senior security official, reported clashes between inmates in a ward and prison staff.
Prisoners set fire to a warehouse full of prison uniforms, sparking the blaze, the official said. He said the “thugs” had been separated from other prisoners to defuse the conflict.
The official added that “the situation is completely under control” and firefighters are putting out the flames.
Video showed gunfire continuing to sound as the sirens sounded and smoke blanketed the sky over Tehran.
Witnesses said police blocked the road to Avon Prison and heard at least three loud explosions from the area. The main highway near the prison in the north of the capital was crowded with traffic and many people honked their horns in solidarity with the protests.
Riot police were seen driving toward the facility on motorcycles, as were ambulances and fire trucks. Witnesses also reported that the internet was blocked in the area.
The US-based Iranian Center for Human Rights reported that “armed clashes” broke out within the prison walls. It said the gunfire was first heard in Ward 7 of the prison. The Associated Press could not immediately verify the account.
The prison fire comes as protesters intensify anti-government demonstrations by 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on main streets across Iran and some cities and universities on Saturday on 9 month death.
The Human Rights Ombudsman reported that hundreds of people, including children, had died as the campaign’s fourth week ended.
Demonstrators chanted “Down with the dictator” in the streets of Ardabil in the northwest of the country.
Students gathered outside universities in Kermanshah, Rasht and Tehran, according to videos on social media. In the city of Sanandaj, a demonstration hotspot in the northern Kurdish region, schoolgirls chanted “Women, life, freedom” in the central street.
The protests erupted after public outrage over Ms Amini’s death in police custody. She was arrested in Tehran by Iran’s morality police for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.
The Iranian government maintains that Ms. Amini was not abused in police custody, but her family said her body showed bruises and other signs of beatings after she was detained.
At least 233 protesters have been killed since demonstrations swept across Iran on September 17, according to the US human rights monitor HRANA. Thirty-two of the dead were under the age of 18, the group said. Earlier, the Oslo-based Iranian human rights group estimated that 201 people had been killed.
Iranian authorities have dismissed the unrest as an alleged Western conspiracy, without providing evidence.
Iranian public outrage over Amini’s death has prompted girls and women to take off the mandatory hijab on the streets in a show of solidarity. Other segments of society, including oil workers, have joined the movement, which has spread to at least 19 cities and is one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the country’s 2009 green campaign.
Riots have also erupted in prisons, with clashes between prisoners and guards reported recently at Lakan prison in the northern province of Gilan.
Business strikes resumed in major cities in the Kurdish region on Saturday, including Amini’s hometown and the birthplace of the protests in Bukan and Saqqez.
The government responded with a brutal crackdown, arresting activists and protest organizers, condemning Iranian celebrities who expressed support, even confiscating their passports, and using live ammunition, tear gas and sonic bombs to disperse crowds, killing them.
In a video widely circulated on Saturday, paramilitary volunteer group plainclothes Baski can be seen forcing a woman into a car and firing bullets in the air during protests in Goha Dasht, northern Iran.
Widespread internet outages have also made it difficult for protesters to communicate with the outside world, while Iranian authorities have detained at least 40 journalists since the unrest began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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