Police arrested a number of “security violators” during a protest against the backdrop of a receding lake in northwestern Iran, which, according to official media, was considered the largest in the Middle East.
“A number of violent and hypocritical individuals who had no other purpose than to destroy public property and violate the safety of residents” were identified and arrested by the official IRNA news agency on the sidelines of this protest movement.
This comes after the Fars news agency reported on Saturday that “dozens of people took to the streets of the cities of Nakda and Orumiya to protest against the authorities’ inattention to the drying up of Lake Urmia.”
She explained that these people chanted slogans, including “Lake Urmia is dying and (Parliament) orders to kill it” and “Lake Urmia is thirsty.”
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.