'Clerics get lost!': Iran protests rage on over passenger plane disaster

Protesters denouncing Iran's clerical rulers took to the streets and riot police deployed to face them on Monday, in a third day of demonstrations after authorities acknowledged shooting down a passenger plane by accident. Demonstrations in Iran, some met by a violent crackdown, are the latest twist in one of the most serious escalations between Washington and Tehran since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Video showed students on Monday chanting slogans including “Clerics get lost!” outside universities in the city of Isfahan and in Tehran, where riot police were filmed taking positions on the streets.

Images from the previous two days of protests showed wounded people being carried and pools of blood on the ground. Gunshots could be heard, although the police denied opening fire.

US President Donald Trump, who raised the stakes last week by ordering a drone strike that killed Iran's most powerful military commander, tweeted to Iran's leaders: "don't kill your protesters.”

Tehran has acknowledged shooting down the Ukrainian jetliner by mistake on Wednesday, killing all 176 people aboard, hours after firing at US targets in Iraq to retaliate for the killing on January 3 of General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.