PARIS, Feb 15, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Dozens of students protested at Tehran University on Friday in a show of anger against the institution's leadership following the murder of a student earlier this week, activists said.

According to media reports, the students are unhappy over the lack of security around the university premises, despite past complaints, in the wake of the killing by a robber on Wednesday of business student Amir Mohammad Khaleghi, 19.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency group posted footage of students marching on campus shouting slogans against the university management.

With protests also continuing into the evening, it said that at least two students had been arrested by the security forces.

The Amir Kabir Newsletter, a social media channel on Telegram and X which follows the situation in Iranian universities, said the students had come out of their dorms to stage a sit-in during the evening.

It said they also shouted slogans against the Islamic republic and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The chancellor of the university had spoken to them in a bid to calm the situation, it added, saying there was a heavy presence of security forces who used force against some students.

Some reports said that the student had been killed by two thieves on motorbikes.

Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani, addressing the matter, said on Friday on X: "The security of students and the peace of families is a duty and priority for the government. We invite everyone to keep the path of dialogue open by maintaining peace."

State news agency IRNA reported that Tehran University caretaker head, Hossein Hosseini, expressed sympathy with the university students by attending their gathering on Friday night.

"Right now, we are all in an emotional atmosphere, but starting tomorrow, we must carefully address the demands in an expert atmosphere and with the presence of student representatives," he was quoted as saying.

Iranian authorities are eager to prevent any repeat of the nationwide demonstrations that erupted in 2022 after the custody death of the young Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini and shook the country.

Universities have traditionally been hubs of protests in Iran, with students taking part in the 1979 uprising that ousted the shah, a wave of anti-government demonstrations in 1999 and more recently the protest movement sparked by Amini's death.