World

PARIS — Rights groups voiced alarm on Tuesday over the extent of an Iranian crackdown on a Kurdish-populated city that has become a hub for protests, as oil refinery workers took industrial action in a new tactic.

Iran's clerical authorities have been shaken by over three weeks of protests that erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old Iranian of Kurdish origin, who had been arrested by the notorious morality police.

Despite the use of brutal force by the authorities that activists say has left dozens dead, and led to hundreds of arrests, there is so far no sign of the protest movement coming to an end.

Protests have been especially intense in the city of Sanandaj in the western province of Kurdistan, Amini's home region, where rights groups fear heavy casualties and accuse authorities of resorting to shelling of neighbourhoods.

The Norway-based Hengaw rights group said an Iranian warplane had arrived at the city's airport overnight and buses carrying special forces were on their way to the city from elsewhere in Iran.

It said residents were having problems sending video evidence of events due to internet restrictions but said a seven-year-old had been killed on Sunday night. AFP could not immediately verify the claims.

Hengaw said at least seven people had been confirmed killed by the security forces in Sanandaj and other Kurdish-populated cities since Saturday.

Amnesty International said it was "alarmed by the crackdown on protests in Sanandaj amid reports of security forces using firearms and firing teargas indiscriminately, including into people's homes".

On a visit to Sanandaj, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi reaffirmed Tehran's position — strongly contested by rights groups — that the unrest had been "supported, planned and carried out by separatist terrorist groups".

'All together!' 

The New-York based Centre for Human Rights in Iran said there was a risk of a similar situation in Sistan-Baluchistan province in the southeast where activists say more than 90 people have been killed since September 30.

“The ruthless killings of civilians by security forces in Kurdistan province, on the heels of the massacre in Sistan-Baluchistan province, are likely preludes to severe state violence to come,” said its Director Hadi Ghaemi.

Analysts have said the protests are proving particularly challenging for the authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, due to their duration and multifaceted nature, ranging from street demonstrations to individual acts of defiance.

In a new development on Monday, protests spread to Iran’s oil refineries with videos showing striking workers burning tyres and blocking roads outside the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the southwest.

They could also be heard shouting slogans including “Death to the dictator” and “Don’t be scared, we are all together!”

Similar actions were in progress on Tuesday with Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) saying strikes were in progress in Abadan in western Iran and Bushehr to the south.

State news agency IRNA denied there was any strike action in the area. The governor of Asalouyeh, Ali Hashemi, told the Fars news agency that “opportunists” who had caused fires in the area had been arrested.

University campuses and even school classrooms have also seen repeated protests, with students at the Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran on Monday shown chanting anti-regime slogans.

In a video shared by the 1500tasvir social media channel that monitors protests and police violations, students at the Tehran Art University were shown spelling out the Persian word for blood in a human chain.

‘Vain effort to silence’ 

The crackdown on the protests sparked by Amini’s death on September 16 has claimed at least 95 lives, according to IHR.

Activists say that among those who died in the protests are two teenage girls, Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh. Their families say they were killed by security forces after being detained. Authorities insist they died in falls.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russel said: “We are extremely concerned by continuing reports of children and adolescents being killed, injured and detained.”

The crackdown has prompted international condemnation with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan telling Iran the “world is watching” and “will hold responsible those using violence in a vain effort to silence” protesters.

Britain said Monday it had imposed sanctions on Iran’s morality police, the unit which arrested Amini and enforces strict dress rules for women including the compulsory headscarf.

Iran said it has summoned the British ambassador to protest against the “baseless” sanctions.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Tuesday that five French citizens are currently being held in Iran. Paris had previously said four French were held. According to the Iranian intelligence ministry, at least one of nine foreigners Iran is holding over links to the protests is French.

LONDON — The UK supreme court will on Tuesday consider the legality of Scottish moves to hold a new referendum on independence next year without the consent of the government in London.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalist government in Edinburgh wants a fresh vote on the question: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

On Monday, she told her Scottish National Party’s (SNP) annual conference the hearing would not have been necessary if the UK government in Westminster respected Scottish democracy.

“But Westminster has no such respect. That means this issue was always destined to end up in court sooner or later — better, in my view, that it is sooner,” she said.

“If the court decides in the way we hope it does, on 19th October next year there will be an independence referendum.”

The supreme court hearings — initiated by Scotland’s top legal adviser — will see senior lawyers wrangle over the powers of the devolved parliament in Edinburgh versus Westminster.

The SNP fought the 2021 Scottish parliamentary elections on a promise to hold a legally valid referendum after the COVID crisis subsided.

It now wants to go ahead but the UK government, which has to give approval under the Scotland Act 1998, has not given permission.

New UK Prime Minister Liz Truss in a television interview this month reiterated her view that the last referendum in 2014 was a once-in-a-generation event.

“I’m very clear there shouldn’t be another referendum before that generation is up,” she added.

‘Never give up’ 

Opinion polls now indicate that voters in Scotland are near evenly divided over the question of independence.

The last referendum in 2014 saw 55 per cent of Scots vote “no” to breaking away.

But this came before Brexit, which most in Scotland voted against, and the parliamentary election, which saw a majority of pro-independence lawmakers elected for the first time.

The Scottish government wants to be able to create its own legal framework for another vote, arguing that the “right to self-determination is a fundamental and inalienable right”.

But the UK government argues that Scotland cannot act unilaterally in a “reserved” matter concerning the constitutional make-up of the United Kingdom as a whole, where the government in London holds sway.

To get around this, the SNP-led government wants to hold an “advisory referendum” to test support, without immediate change.

The supreme court hears cases of the greatest public or constitutional importance affecting the whole population, ruling on points of law.

Five judges including supreme court President Robert Reed, will begin two days of hearings at 10:30am (09:30 GMT) on Tuesday.

They will examine the legal validity of a referendum bill proposed by the SNP that sets a referendum date of October 19, 2023, with a ruling at a later date.

“The court is unlikely to rule in favour of the SNP — but those in favour of the Union should not see this as a defining victory,” wrote Akash Paun of the Institute for Government think tank.

If thwarted in court, the party plans to make the next general election, due by January 2025 at the latest, a de facto referendum, campaigning on a single issue.

Sturgeon on Monday said a legal defeat would leave the Scottish government “a very simple choice: Put our case for independence to the people in an election or give up on Scottish democracy”.

“I will never give up on Scottish democracy,” she added.

PARIS — An international footballer, an influential tech-blogger, a woman who was merely eating her breakfast without a headscarf.

In Iran no-one who expresses dissent from the ruling theocratic system, including the famous, is safe from being caught in the dragnet of a crackdown that has seen hundreds arrested in more than three weeks of protests.

Activists say that when the unrest erupted last month over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been arrested by the notorious morality police, the authorities initially resorted to lethal force, killing dozens in the space of days.

But, as well as keeping up the threat of force, authorities are increasingly resorting to arrests, with a particular focus on those who promote videos of protests or anti-regime messages on social media.

"They have gone for all for them — cultural activists, women's rights activists and journalists. Anyone who could transmit information to the outside world or to the internal networks," said Roya Boroumand, director of the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center.

"There have been mass arrests," she added.

The Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), a New York-based non-government group, said that according to its count at least 1,200 people have been arrested, including at least 92 members of civil society who were detained not at street protests but arbitrarily at their homes or at work.

'Most important tactic' 

The nature of the current protests, and the authorities' reaction, are different to the last major street protests, in November 2019, when Amnesty International accused the authorities of killing at least 321 people in a week of bloodletting.

This time the demonstrations are spread across the country, involve a wide range of social groups, and have already lasted over three weeks.

They have taken many different forms, from street marches and student protests to individual acts of defiance such as women removing or even burning the obligatory headscarf.

The authorities' "most important tactic now is detaining hundreds, even thousands of people," said Shadi Sadr, director of the London-based Justice for Iran group, which seeks accountability for human rights violations in the Islamic republic.

“They don’t kill on the scale they are capable of — though they may do in the near future — but by detaining hundreds of people who would be considered to be leading figures of these protests.

“They believe they can control the protests so that they slowly and gradually die down.

“If they conclude that this tactic is not working, they can use a final and decisive move,” she warned. “We have to be ready for that.”

Well-known figures 

Even before the current surge in arrests, Iran was in the throes of a crackdown that had seen the detentions of prominent figures including filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, both of whom remain under arrest.

The list of those rounded up so far includes prominent athletes, artists, journalists, lawyers, activists, technology experts as well as students and ordinary members of the public.

International footballer Hossein Mahini was arrested for supporting the protests, while ex-football legend Ali Karimi, believed to be living outside Iran, has been charged over his social media activity.

Ali Daei, once the world’s top international goalscorer in men’s football, had his passport confiscated on returning to Tehran from abroad after bitterly criticising the Islamic republic on social media.

He told AFP on Monday it had been returned “after two or three days”.

Reports from Iran also said the passports of traditional singer Homayoun Shajarian, the son the of legendary singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian and an acclaimed performer himself, and prominent actress Sahar Dolatshahi had been confiscated at the airport.

Singer Shervin Hajipour, whose song about the protests became a viral sensation, was detained although he has since been released on bail and posted a video shared by media inside Iran where he described the situation as a “misunderstanding”.

Meanwhile, four Tehran lawyers known for dealing with sensitive cases — Mahsa Gholamalizadeh, Saeid Jalilian, Milad Panahipour and Babak Paknia — are all under arrest, the CHRI said.

‘Frightening sign’ 

The Washington-based Committee to Protect Journalists says over two dozen journalists are being held including two female reporters, Nilufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, who exposed Amini’s case by reporting respectively from her hospital and funeral.

Another prominent victim of the arrest wave was Amiremad Mirmirani, better known as Jadi, one of Iran’s most prominent technology bloggers who was picked up on October 5 when security agents stormed his house.

“This latest crackdown on technologists is a frightening sign that no voice or form of expression is being spared in this fiercely securitised atmosphere,” rights organisations including Article 19, a freedom of expression group, said in a statement.

Campaigner Hossein Ronaghi, who as a Wall Street Journal contributor was bitterly critical of soft Western media coverage of Iran, has now been held for two weeks in solitary confinement and is suffering from a broken leg sustained in custody, according to his brother Hassan.

Young Iranian woman Donya Rad was detained in late September after a picture that went viral on social media showed her and a friend enjoying breakfast in a Tehran cafe without their headscarves.

She was finally released over the weekend after 10 days in detention, her sister Dina wrote on Twitter.

“This isn’t a crackdown, it’s an attempt to obliterate civil society,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the CHRI. “Iran’s government keeps revealing that it’s terrified of its own people.”

PARIS — Hackers supporting Iran's wave of women-led protests interrupted a state TV news broadcast with an image of gun-sight crosshairs and flames over an image of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in footage widely shared online on Sunday.

In other anti-regime messages, activists have spray-painted "Death to Khamenei" and "The Police are the Murderers of the People" on billboards in Tehran.

"The blood of our youths is on your hands," read an on-screen message that flashed up briefly during the TV broadcast Saturday evening, as street protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, again rocked Tehran and other cities.

"Police forces used tear gas to disperse the crowds in dozens of locations in Tehran," state news agency IRNA reported, adding that the demonstrators "chanted slogans and set fire to and damaged public property, including a police booth".

Anger has flared since the death of Amini on September 16, three days after she was arrested by the notorious morality police for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women.

"Join us and rise up," read another message in the TV hack claimed by the group Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice).

It also posted pictures of Amini and three other women killed in the crackdown that has claimed at least 95 lives according to Norway-based group Iran Human Rights.

Another 90 people were killed in Iran's far southeast, in unrest on September 30 sparked by the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police chief in Sistan-Baluchestan province, said IHR, citing the UK-based Baluch Activists Campaign.

One Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps member was killed Saturday in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, and a member of the IRGC's Basij paramilitary force died in Tehran from "a serious head injury following an armed attack by a mob", IRNA said — in killings that raised the death toll among security forces to 14.

Iran has been torn by the biggest wave of social unrest in almost three years, which has seen protesters including university students and even young schoolgirls chant "Woman, Life, Freedom".

“Videos coming out from Tehran indicate that there are so many protests, in every corner of the city, in small and big numbers,” said US-based campaigner and journalist Omid Memarian on Twitter.

In Amini’s hometown Saqez, Kurdistan, schoolgirls chanted and marched down a street swinging their hijab headscarves in the air, in videos the Hengaw rights group said were recorded on Saturday.

Gruesome footage has emerged from the state’s often bloody response, spread online despite widespread Internet outages and blocks on all the major social media platforms.

One video shows a man who was shot dead at the wheel of his car in Sanandaj, Kurdistan’s capital, where the province’s police chief, Ali Azadi, later charged he was “killed by anti-revolutionary forces”.

Angry men then appear to take revenge on a member of the feared Basij militia, swarming him and beating him badly, in another widely shared video.

Yet, another video clip shows a young woman said to have been shot dead in Mashhad in the country’s northeast.

Many on social media said it evoked images of Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman who became an enduring symbol of the Iranian opposition after she was shot dead at protests in 2009.

‘Not afraid anymore’ 

In the face of the violence and the online restrictions, protesters have adopted new tactics to spread their message of resistance in public spaces.

“We are not afraid anymore. We will fight,” read one large banner placed on an overpass of Tehran’s Modares highway, seen in images verified by AFP.

In other footage, a man with a spray can is seen altering the wording of a government billboard on the same highway from “The Police are the Servants of the People” to “The Police are the Murderers of the People”.

Several water features in the Iranian capital were said to have been coloured blood-red, although the head of city’s municipality parks organisation Ali Mohamad Mokhtari insisted that “this information is completely false and there isn’t any change in the colours of fountains in Tehran”.

Iran has accused outside forces of stirring up the protests, as solidarity rallies have been worldwide. The United States, European Union and other governments have imposed new sanctions on Iran.

Iranian pop singer Shervin Hajipour — who was arrested after his song “Baraye” went viral online and became a protest anthem — appeared back in an Instagram video Sunday for the first time since his release.

In a short message, the 25-year-old denied links to any “movement or organisation outside the country” and said his song was only meant to “express solidarity with the people”.

KYIV — A Russian missile strike killed at least 13 people in Zaporizhzhia, authorities said on Sunday — the latest deadly attack targeting the southern Ukrainian city, prompting President Volodymyr Zelensky to call the bombardment "absolute evil".

The reports came a day after a key bridge linking Russia with the annexed Crimean Peninsula was partially destroyed by an explosion, and as the Kremlin replaced its top general amid major battlefield setbacks in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will chair a meeting of his Security Council on Monday in the wake of the bridge attack, the Kremlin told Russian media.

Ukrainian officials said 13 people had died and 49 people, including six children, were in hospital after Russian missiles again hit Zaporizhzhia.

At least 17 people, including a child, died when seven Russian missiles hit the centre of the industrial city earlier this week.

Regional official Oleksandr Starukh posted pictures of heavily damaged apartment blocks on Telegram and said a rescue operation had been launched to find victims under the rubble.

Zelensky denounced the “merciless strikes on peaceful people” and residential buildings as “absolute evil” perpetrated by “savages and terrorists”.

Divers were to inspect the waters beneath the giant Crimea bridge on Sunday, a day after a truck bomb ignited a massive fire on the road and rail link, killing three people.

“We are ordering the examination by divers. They will start work from six in the morning,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin announced.

“First results” of Russia’s inspection of the bridge were due on Sunday, he added.

Russia on Saturday said traffic had resumed over the strategic link, a symbol of the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The 19 kilometre bridge was attacked at dawn on Saturday, sparking celebrations from Ukrainians and others on social media. Dramatic footage showed it burning and a road section plunging into the water.

But Zelensky did not directly mention it in his nightly address and officials made no claim of responsibility.

Following the blast, the bodies of an unidentified man and a woman were pulled out of the water, probably passengers in a car driving near the exploded truck, Moscow said.

Authorities had identified the owner of the truck as a resident of Russia’s southern Krasnodar region and said his home was being searched.

Emergency situation’ 

The bridge is logistically crucial for Moscow — a vital transport link for carrying military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

It is also hugely symbolic. President Vladimir Putin personally inaugurated the structure in 2018 — even driving a truck across it — and Moscow had maintained the link was safe despite the fighting.

While some in Moscow hinted at Ukrainian “terrorism”, Russian state media continued to call it an “emergency situation”.

Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak posted a picture on Twitter of a long section of the bridge half-submerged. “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning”, he wrote.

But in a later statement, he appeared to suggest Moscow had a hand in the blast, noting the truck that detonated “entered the bridge from the Russian side”.

The Kremlin’s spokesman said Putin had ordered a commission to be set up to look into the blast.

Officials in Moscow stopped short of blaming Kyiv but a Russian-installed official in Crimea pointed the finger at “Ukrainian vandals”.

“There is an undisguised terrorist war against us,” Russian ruling party deputy Oleg Morozov told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Military analysts said the blast could have a major impact if Moscow saw the need to shift already hard-pressed troops to Crimea from other regions or if it prompted a rush by residents to leave.

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian senior officer now with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that even if Ukrainians were not behind the blast, it constituted “a massive influence operation win for Ukraine”.

“It is a demonstration to Russians, and the rest of the world, that Russia’s military cannot protect any of the provinces it recently annexed,” he said on Twitter.

Authorities in Crimea tried to allay fears of food and fuel shortages in the territory, which has been dependent on the Russian mainland since its annexation from Ukraine.

Moscow appoints new general 

The blast came after lightning territorial gains by Ukraine in the east and south that have undermined the Kremlin’s official annexation of Donetsk, neighbouring Lugansk and the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

After weeks of military setbacks that triggered unprecedented domestic criticism of Russia’s army, Moscow on Saturday announced that a new general — Sergei Surovikin — would take over its forces in Ukraine.

Surovikin previously led Russia’s military in southern Ukraine. He has combat experience from the 1990s conflicts in Tajikistan and Chechnya, as well as, more recently, in Syria.

SEOUL — North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea early Sunday, Seoul's military said, the seventh such launch in two weeks, just hours after a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier concluded joint drills off the Korean Peninsula.

Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have ramped up combined naval exercises in recent weeks, infuriating Pyongyang which sees them as rehearsals for invasion and justifies its blitz of missile launches as necessary "countermeasures".

With talks long stalled, Pyongyang has doubled down on its banned weapons programmes, firing an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan last week, with officials and analysts warning it has completed preparations for another nuclear test.

South Korea’s military said Sunday it had “detected two short-range ballistic missiles between 01:48 and 01:58 (16:48-16:58 GMT) fired from the Munchon area in Kangwon province towards the East Sea”, also known as the Sea of Japan.

The missiles “flew approximately 350 kilometres at an altitude of 90 kilometres”, Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement, calling the launches a “serious provocation”.

Tokyo also confirmed the launches, with the coast guard saying the missiles had landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Japanese senior vice defence minister Toshiro Ino said Tokyo was analysing the missiles, adding that “either one of them has the possibility of being a submarine-launched ballistic missile [SLBM]”.

Seoul said last month it had detected signs the North was preparing to fire an SLBM, a weapon Pyongyang last tested in May.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has rebuffed Washington’s calls for talks and instead chosen to “improve” his ballistic missile programme.

“He’s clearly not abandoned his nuclear weapons ambitions,” Kirby told ABC News on Sunday.

“We’re going to make sure that we have the capabilities in place to defend our national security interest if it comes to that. But there’s no reason for it to come to that,” he said, adding the United States was committed to “a diplomatic path forward”.

Drills, drills, drills 

North Korea’s missile tests usually aim to develop new capabilities, but its recent launches, “from different locations at different times of day, may be intended to demonstrate military readiness”, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

“The Kim regime is trying to coerce Seoul, Tokyo and Washington to abandon their trilateral security cooperation.”

At an emergency meeting of Seoul’s National Security Council following the missile test, however, South Korean officials vowed to strengthen that cooperation, according to a statement.

The recent spate of launches is part of a record year of weapons tests by isolated North Korea, which Kim last month declared an “irreversible” nuclear power, effectively ending the possibility of denuclearisation talks.

Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have ramped up joint military drills in response, with the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier and its strike group redeployed to the area last week.

On Thursday, Seoul’s military said it had scrambled 30 fighter jets after 12 North Korean warplanes staged a rare formation flight and apparent air-to-surface firing drills.

Go Myong-hyun, a researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said North Korea was trying to claim that the nature of its sanctions-busting weapons tests were the same as the defensive joint drills between the allies.

“North Korea is trying to give equivalence through its continued missile launches,” he told AFP.

No new sanctions 

Analysts say Pyongyang is emboldened to continue its weapons testing, confident that gridlock at the United Nations will protect it from further sanctions.

Last week, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss Pyongyang’s launch over Japan, which officials and analysts said was a Hwasong-12 that likely travelled the longest horizontal distance of any North Korean test.

But at the meeting, North Korea’s longtime ally and economic benefactor China blamed Washington for provoking the spate of launches, with Deputy Chinese Ambassador to the UN Geng Shuang accusing Washington of “poisoning the regional security environment”.

US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for the “strengthening” of existing sanctions on North Korea, something China and Russia vetoed in May.

The Security Council has been divided on responding to Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions for months, with Russia and China on the sympathetic side and the rest of the council pushing for punishment.

Officials in Seoul and Washington have been warning for months that Pyongyang will also conduct another nuclear test, likely after China’s Communist Party Congress later this month.

“A flurry of missile tests like the one we’ve seen could indicate a build-up to a nuclear test, but predicting the timing with any precision is quite challenging,” US-based security analyst Ankit Panda told AFP.

CREESLOUGH , Ireland — least nine people have been killed in an explosion at a petrol station in County Donegal in Ireland’s northwest, police said on Saturday.

The Garda Siochana police force said eight people had been hospitalised and that it “can now confirm nine fatalities as a result of this incident”.

“The search and recovery for further fatalities continues at the site in the village of Creeslough,” it said.

The cause of the explosion remained unknown and police had yet to announce the launch of an inquiry as the search through rubble went on.

The toll from Friday’s explosion had already risen from three to seven overnight.

Rescue efforts by Ireland’s emergency services went on through the night after the blast ripped through a petrol station forecourt and a nearby apartment complex.

An aerial photograph taken after the explosion showed the petrol station building destroyed.

Two two-storey residential buildings behind had collapsed, while the facade of a similar adjacent building was blown off.

Resident Kieran Gallagher, whose house is about 150 metres from the scene, said the blast sounded like a “bomb”.

“I was in my house at the time and heard the explosion. Instantly I knew it was something — it was like a bomb going off,” he told the BBC.

At a service at the local church on Saturday morning, Father John Joe Duffy said the community had been hit by “a tsunami of grief”.

Many emergency services vehicles remained at the scene overnight, including fire services from both sides of the border with British-run Northern Ireland.

Gardai and civil defence were also involved, and a coastguard helicopter airlifted some of the injured from Letterkenny University Hospital to the capital Dublin.

‘Shocked and numbed’ 

The university hospital, some 24 kilometres from the explosion, was placed on an emergency footing to deal with “multiple injuries”, it said in a statement.

Ireland’s premier Micheal Martin called it a “very dark day” as he spoke to the media briefly before heading to the scene.

“The scale and enormity of it, it’s such a small community, it means that almost everybody will know on a friendly basis people who’ve lost their lives,” he said.

“It’s a very dark day for the people of Donegal and for Ireland.”

Martin earlier thanked members of the emergency services who were working non-stop “in extremely traumatic circumstances”.

Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue, who represents northeast Donegal in the Irish parliament, compared the scenes to events during the decades-long sectarian conflict on the island of Ireland over British rule in Northern Ireland.

“People are shocked and numbed,” McConalogue told Irish broadcaster RTE.

“The scenes from the event are reminiscent of the images from The Troubles years ago, in terms of the scene on the ground and the damage and the debris.”

Creeslough is around 50 kilometres from the border with Northern Ireland and has a population of about 400 people.

The Applegreen service station is on the N56 road, which loops around the northern tip of the Irish republic.

Applegreen tweeted that the news was “devastating”.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the deceased, those who have been injured, and the wider Creeslough community,” said the company.

Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins expressed his “shock” in an official statement.

“This tragedy is a terrible blow to a community that is closely knit and where every loss and injury will be felt by every member of the community and far beyond,” he said.