9 people killed, 1,800 injured during Nowruz celebrations in Iran

At least nine people were killed and more than 1,800 received injuries of varying severity in Iran, while celebrating the last Tuesday before the Nowruz holiday (starts March 21, 2021), said Mojtaba Khaledi, the spokesman for the emergency management organization, Report informs referring to IRIB.

“Nine people died this year at Charshanbe Suri (the ‘Scarlet Wednesday’, an Iranian festival celebrated on the eve of the last Wednesday before Nowruz), and 1,894 were injured,” Khaledi said, adding that last year there were four killed and 1,498 injured.

He said that the most affected are in the provinces of Tehran, East Azerbaijan, Kermanshah.

"46 percent of those wounded are 6-18 years old," he said.

On the last Tuesday before the Nowruz holiday, people make bonfires and jump over them. In recent years, the use of pyrotechnics has become popular among young people, as a result of which hundreds of people get injured every year.