Roughly 200 people were arrested during recent protests which started on June 30 in the southern cities of Khorramshahr and Abadan over drinking water shortages.
The number is far higher than the 10 people the judiciary media reported to be detained.
The purified-water shortage in southwestern Iran saw the staging of one of the largest water-related protests in Iran this year.
A video posted on social media displayed police firing tear gas at demonstrators, and gunfire was heard in the background.
Iran’s judiciary also confirmed the arrest of 10 protesters.
Water shortage protests have also been reported on social media in Abadan, and the provincial capital of Ahvaz.
Allegedly, the police have been using concrete barriers to block roads leading to a central square, in an attempt to quell further protests.
The resident also claimed that there were reports of police detaining demonstrators indiscriminately.
Amnesty International released a statement on July 6, calling on Iran to ensure right to safe drinking water and release peaceful protesters in Khuzestan.
The statement reads in part, “Iranian authorities must carry out an impartial and thorough investigation into reports that security forces used unnecessary and excessive force, possibly including firearms, against generally peaceful protesters during recent protests in Khuzestan province, where people have been demanding clean and safe drinking water, Amnesty International said today.

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A water main break affecting water service to the Harris County jail is expected to be repaired by Monday, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Viewers contacted Eyewitness News because they believed their loved ones did not have access to water and visitation was canceled.
Harris County told ABC13 the problem came from a water main break which left some floors of the facility with very little to no pressure.
The Sheriff’s Office posted on Twitter that repairs are expected to be complete on Monday and all facilities have air conditioning.
1/2: Water pressure issues have impacted operations in some jail cell blocks this weekend.
The issues at the 1200 Baker Street jail were resolved as of Saturday, and we expect repairs to be complete at the 701 San Jacinto jail on Monday.
All facilities have A/C.
#hounews pic.twitter.com/8AltNNnNFn — HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) July 8, 2018 According to authorities, inmates have had continued access to clean drinking water and working toilets.

Water, the elixir of life, has become one of the biggest crisis points in the world today.
The report, in fact, goes on to say that India is the worst country in the world when it comes to the number of rural people without access to safe water.
And trying to bring this much-needed change are some entrepreneurs in the country who, with their respective ventures, are making clean drinking water a reality for people like Kumar.
Their tool: water ATMs, which dispense clean drinking water at prices as low as `2-`5 a litre.
From one water ATM in New Delhi in 2013 to over 300 installed across four cities—Ghaziabad, Mumbai, New Delhi and Surat—today, they have come a long way.
Running on solar electricity, these hybrid water ATMs have an in-built water purification system that purifies the water coming in from the source.
Then there is Swajal, a Gurugram-based water ATM firm, which started in 2012.
“In our early days, we approached the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation with our concept of providing safe water through ATMs,” says Vikram Budhiraja, CEO, Pi-lo.
The firm is now in talks with the Union government’s Department of Production Engineering, which does the quality check for new technologies developed by companies, to raise an additional Rs 100 crore for its future plans.
We have already started utilising the funds to set up more ATMs across the country.

The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy Anna Clark Metropolitan (2018) What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City Mona Hanna-Attisha OneWorld (2018) LeeAnne Walters and her family endured months of ill health before they discovered the source.
Flint’s water was badly contaminated with lead, exposing tens of thousands of people to the potent neurotoxin.
Two books recount how the crisis unfolded.
Testing Walters’s water in April 2015, he found lead levels hundreds of times those deemed acceptable: they averaged 2,000 p.p.b., with the highest more than 13,000 p.p.b..
What finally forced the city to switch back to DWSD water a month later was proof that the supply was harming children.
She battled to access health records to show how levels of lead in children’s blood had changed since the switch.
Officials smeared her, distorted her findings and dismissed her evidence.
It would be all too easy to blame Flint’s crisis on the incompetence of a few officials, but both authors pinpoint deeper factors.
Lead pipes are ubiquitous in US cities, and the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that it would cost up to US$80 billion to replace them.
The story of Flint’s crisis is still unfolding.

Water that is safe to drink, straight from the kitchen tap, is more of a luxury than we realize.
There are many places around the world where access to safe drinking water is either nonexistent, or only available for a high price.
But did you know that six million of your fellow Californians are also forced to drink out of plastic bottles?
One of the most serious water quality offenders in California is nitrate, which causes serious health problems for children and pregnant women and is associated with certain cancers.
A recent multiyear study at UC Davis estimated that 550,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizer, 240,000 tons of manure nitrogen, and 4,000 tons of urban and food processing waste effluent nitrogen “are annually applied to or recycled in Central Valley agricultural lands for food production.” Some of the nitrate in these sources leaches to groundwater.
Back in 2012, when the state started really looking into it, another report from UC Davis, this time addressing regulatory options, stated, “Current regulatory programs have not effectively controlled groundwater nitrate contamination, and water quality in these areas has largely worsened for decades, a trend which seems likely to continue.
The resulting massive “Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program,” with its extensive monitoring and reporting, doesn’t have a lot of friends in farming country, and I think may be completely unknown in urban circles.
With six million acres of irrigated farmland enrolled in the program, farmers are paying well over $22 million dollars a year, and the costs are rising annually.
Organic farmers, using fertilizers that are much less water-soluble than those used in conventional agriculture, know that their best management practices contribute significantly less to the problem, but the state’s program paints all farmers with the same broad brush.
A regulatory approach that rewarded good practices would be a good idea.

LUSAKA, July 5 (Xinhua) — The Zambia government said on Thursday that the country was still at risk of another cholera outbreak, despite the recent victory over the waterborne disease.
Cholera, which broke out from August last year, claimed 114 lives.
Last month, the government announced that it had contained the disease.
Minister of Health Chitalu Chilufya said the country still remains at risk of cholera outbreaks as long as access to clean and safe drinking water remains a challenge.
In a ministerial statement delivered in parliament, the Zambian minister said poor sanitation as well as inadequate solid waste management were some of the issues that needed to be tackled in order for the country to be safe from the threats of cholera outbreaks.
"Although the most recent battle against cholera has been won, the war is far from over.
In view of the high economic costs, both direct and indirect, a permanent end to the alarming threats of cholera outbreak is of utmost importance," he said.
The government, he said, was committed to ensuring that cholera outbreaks become a thing of the past, adding that the government was working on medium to long term projects for the improvement of water and sanitation.

The firm, dubbed the Dow Chemical Company (Dow) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID collaborated with the Little Sisters of St. Francis (LSOSF)to commissions installation of a system that will help remove fluoride in drinking water sources in the area.
It is estimated that 20 million Kenyans suffer from teeth and bone fluorosis as a result.
In urban areas, a large population depends on boreholes water that often contains high fluoride levels.
"Through the collaboration with Dow and Little Sisters, we have managed to address the immediate challenge of the water services and the quality of water within the institution and the wider community.
This project allowed us come together to find a way to solve a major challenge that could not be resolved without collaboration," said Joe Sanders, USAID/ KIWASH chief of party.
USAID’s WASH project (KIWASH) is a $50 million investment by USAID and the American people in Kenya’s health and prosperity.
The integrated approach contributes to the fight against extreme poverty by providing safe water to reduce illnesses that cripple productivity and building household and community well-being and prosperity.
Dow has one of the strongest and broadest toolkits in the industry, with robust technology, asset integration, scale and competitive capabilities that enable it to address complex global issues.
Dow’s market-driven, industry-leading portfolio of advanced materials, industrial intermediates, and plastics businesses deliver a broad range of differentiated technology-based products and solutions for customers in high-growth markets such as packaging, infrastructure, and consumer care.
Dow and USAID will offer training to various engineers on site, to ensure the sustainability of the project.

“They died because of the water problem, nothing else,” said Devi, 40, as she recalled how a brawl over a water tanker carrying clean drinking water in March killed her two relatives and finally prompted the government to drill a tubewell.
It is alright for bathing and washing the dishes.” Water pollution is a major challenge, the report said, with nearly 70 percent of India’s water contaminated, impacting three in four Indians and contributing to 20 percent of the country’s disease burden.
Yet only one-third of its wastewater is currently treated, meaning raw sewage flows into rivers, lakes and ponds – and eventually gets into the groundwater.
“Our surface water is contaminated, our groundwater is contaminated.
See, everywhere water is being contaminated because we are not managing our solid waste properly,” said the report’s author Avinash Mishra.
You fall ill because you don’t have access to safe drinking water, because your water is contaminated.” “The burden of not having access to safe drinking water, that burden is greatest on the poor and the price is paid by them.” FROTHY LAKES AND RIVERS Crippling water problems could shave 6 percent off India’s gross domestic product, according to the report by the government think-tank, Niti Aayog.
To tackle this crisis, which is predicted to get worse, the government has urged states – responsible for supplying clean water to residents – to prioritise treating waste water to bridge the supply and demand gap and to save lives.
Currently, only 70 percent of India’s states treat less than half of their wastewater.
The Yamuna river that flows through New Delhi can be seen covered under a thick, detergent-like foam on some days.
That does not stop 10-year-old Gauri, who lives in a nearby slum, from jumping in every day.

It took the deaths of her husband and son to force authorities to supply it to the slum she calls home Weak infrastructure and a national shortage have made water costly all over India, but Sushila Devi paid a higher price than most.
But earlier … the water used to be rusty, we could not even wash our hands or feet with that kind of water," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Delhi.
Water pollution is a major challenge, the report said, with nearly 70 percent of India’s water contaminated, impacting three in four Indians and contributing to 20 percent of the country’s disease burden.
Yet only one-third of its wastewater is currently treated, meaning raw sewage flows into rivers, lakes and ponds – and eventually gets into the groundwater.
"Our surface water is contaminated, our groundwater is contaminated.
You fall ill because you don’t have access to safe drinking water, because your water is contaminated."
"The burden of not having access to safe drinking water, that burden is greatest on the poor and the price is paid by them."
To tackle this crisis, which is predicted to get worse, the government has urged states – responsible for supplying clean water to residents – to prioritise treating waste water to bridge the supply and demand gap and to save lives.
Currently, only 70 percent of India’s states treat less than half of their wastewater.
That does not stop 10-year-old Gauri, who lives in a nearby slum, from jumping in every day.

Protests like those in Khorramshahr have become quite common since the turn of the year, when economic woes and government corruption triggered nationwide unrest across Iran.
But what made the Khorramshahr demonstrations different was that they took place while tens of thousands of Iranians had gathered in Paris to support protesters in Iran.
The rally had two messages.
To the people of Iran: You’re not alone.
Through their uprisings and by relying on resistance units, the Iranian people have the leverage they need to topple this regime,” said Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iranian opposition coalition that organized the event.
The mullahs have practically lost their [nuclear deal].
The event’s speakers, some of whom have close ties to the Trump administration, were unanimous in their belief that only regime change will solve the multitude of problems the Iranian people and the world face when it comes to the regime in Tehran.
Our goal is to have a free, democratic Iran that respects the right of every individual,” Gingrich said.
While the lives of the Iranian people spiraled down into poverty and misery, the Iranian regime was busy sending money, weapons, and troops to its proxies and allies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.
On the morrow of the gathering, demonstrations resumed in Khorramshahr and its neighboring cities.