Iran tense,crackdown continues

An eerie calm settled over the streets of Tehran on Sunday as state media reported at least...

Iran8217;s government said on Sunday it arrested the daughter and four other relatives of former president Hashemi Rafsanjani,one of the countrys most powerful men,in a move that exposed a rift among the ruling Islamic clerics over the disputed presidential election.

State media also reported at least 10 more deaths,bringing the official toll for a week of confrontations to at least 17. State TV said 10 were killed and 100 injured in clashes on Saturday between demonstrators contesting the result of the June 12 election and black-clad police wielding truncheons,tear gas and water cannons.

Police and members of the Basij militia took up positions in the afternoon on major streets and squares,leading to further tension. But there was no word on any new clashes on Sunday.

State-run Press TV reported that Rafsanjanis eldest daughter,Faezeh Hashemi,and four other unidentified family members were arrested late on Saturday. On Sunday evening,it said the four others had been released but that Hashemi remained in detention.

Last week,state television showed images of Hashemi,46,speaking to hundreds of supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi,who alleges fraud in the election,which the government said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won.

The arrests are the strongest sign yet of a serious divide among Irans ruling clerics. Rafsanjani,75,heads two powerful institutions. One of them,the cleric-run Assembly of Experts,has the power to monitor and remove the supreme leader,the countrys most powerful figure. The second is the Expediency Council,a body that arbitrates disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council,which can block legislation.

The assembly has never publicly reprimanded the unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei since he succeeded Islamic Revolution founder Aytollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. But the current crisis has rattled the once-untouchable stature of the supreme leader with protesters openly defying his orders to leave the streets. Rafsanjani was deeply critical of Ahmadinejad during the presidential campaign and has the potential to lead a challenge to Khamenei.

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His daughters arrest came as something of a surprise: in his Friday sermon to tens of thousands of worshippers,Khamenei praised Rafsanjani as one of the architects of the revolution and an effective political figure for many years.

The New-York based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said scores of injured demonstrators who had sought medical treatment after Saturdays clashes were arrested by security forces at hospitals in the capital. It said doctors had been ordered to report protest-related injuries to the authorities.

Irans regime continued to impose a blackout on the most serious conflict since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But fresh images and allegations of brutality emerged as Iranians at home and abroad sought to shed light on a week of astonishing resistance to Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.