Iranian authorities have shut down two Kurdish language newspapers in northwestern Iran, a day after at least 11 people were killed in that region during a clash between Kurdish demonstrators and Iranian police.
The official Iranian news agency (IRNA) quotes the managing editor of the bilingual (Kurdish and Iranian) Ashti daily Thursday as saying a provincial court ordered the temporary closure of the paper.
A Kurdish journalist in the region told VOA's Kurdish service that a second paper, Aso, also was shut down because it reported on the recent wave of anti-Iranian protests in Iran's northern Kurdish region.
The killing last month of a Kurdish activist by Iranian security forces sparked demonstrations, some of them violent, in several predominantly Kurdish cities in northwestern Iran.