1 Dead in Iran Water Shortage Protests

WASHINGTON - Iran’s state media report that one person was killed late Friday during a protest of water shortages in the country’s southwest.

The state news agency IRNA quoted Omid Sabripour,  head of the local government in Shadegan, as saying “a number of Shadegan's people had gathered to protest water shortages due to the drought, during which opportunists and rioters shot dead one of the demonstrators." Sabripour told the agency someone had shot into the air and the falling bullet had struck and killed a bystander. A two-day wave of antigovernment protests in southwest Iran in response to water shortages has drawn new attention to what experts say is the long-running mismanagement of natural resources by Iran’s Islamist rulers.