Funerals for young Iranians, including a young boy who families say was killed in a government crackdown, sparked a fresh wave of anti-regime protests in the Islamic Republic on Friday.

Iran’s spiritual leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei faces its greatest challenge since the 1979 Islamic Revolution amid the two-month-long protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.

Authorities have responded with a crackdown that has killed 342, sentenced half a dozen to death and arrested thousands more, according to a human rights group.

The turmoil also comes with intense attention to the reaction of the Iranian team at the World Cup in Qatar, who will play their first game against England on Monday.

Crowds flocked to the southwestern city of Izeh for the funeral of nine-year-old Kian Pirfalak, according to images released by Iran’s ISNA news agency.

His mother said at the funeral that Kian was shot dead by security forces on Wednesday, despite Iranian officials insisting he was killed in a “terrorist” attack by an extremist group.

“Hear from me yourself how the shooting happened, so they can’t say it was by terrorists because they’re lying,” his mother said of the funeral, according to video posted by the 1500tasvir monitor.

“Maybe they thought we were going to shoot or something and they bombed the car with bullets… Plainclothes cops shot my kid.

Protesters mocked the official version of events, chanting “Basij, Sepah – you are our IS!” according to a video posted by Norway-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR).

The Basij are a pro-government paramilitary force and Sepah is another name for Iran’s feared Revolutionary Guards. ISIS is an alternative name for the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.

“Death Khamenei,” they shouted in another video posted by 1500tasvir.

Opposition media outside Iran said another minor, Sepehr Maghsoudi, 14, was also shot dead in Izeh on Wednesday under similar circumstances. Funerals have repeatedly become the focus of protests.

State television said seven people were buried, including a nine-year-old boy, adding they were killed by “terrorists” on motorcycles.

“Kian Pirfalak, nine, and Sepehr Maghsoudi, 14, are among at least 56 children killed by Iranian forces working to crush the 2022 Iranian revolution,” said Hadi Ghaemi, director of the New York-based Center for human rights in Iran.

IHR also said anti-regime slogans were chanted at the funeral of Aylar Haghi, a young medical student who activists say was killed in a fall from a building blamed on security forces, in the northern city of Tabriz.

Meanwhile, Norway-based Hengaw rights group said large numbers turned out for the funeral in the Kurdish-populated northwestern city of Mahabad for Azad Hassanpour, who was killed by security forces on Thursday.

Mourners then marched through the city chanting anti-regime chants, the group added.

Protesters also set fire to the ancestral home of the late Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the western city of Khomein, according to images released on social media and confirmed by AFP.

But Iran’s Tasnim news agency later denied there was a fire, saying the “door of the historic home is open to visitors.”

Khomeini is said to have been born around the turn of the century in the house in Khomein from which his surname derives. The house was later turned into a museum in his memory.

The nationwide protests – which cut across ethnic groups and social classes – were initially fueled by anger over Khomeini’s compulsory headscarf for women, but have morphed into a movement demanding an end to the Islamic Republic itself.

According to IHR, at least 342 people, including 43 children and 26 women, were killed by security forces in the crackdown on the protests.

Their figures include 123 dead in Sistan-Balochistan province, where protests had a clear spark but have sparked nationwide anger.

The predominantly Sunni Sistan-Balochistan is Iran’s poorest region, and its ethnic Baloch feel discriminated against by Tehran’s Shia elite.

Fresh protests took place in the capital Zahedan, where dozens of security forces were killed on September 30, according to human rights groups, with people removing Islamic Republic flags from buildings, IHR said.

In the port city of Chabahar, people also tore down a billboard of Khomeini, she added.

Images released on social media showed security forces appearing to be shooting at protesters in the province’s city of Iranshahr.

Meanwhile in Doha, Iran captain Alireza Jahanbakhsh insisted the team was focused on football and declined to be drawn over the way they would mark goals.

“Every single player has a different celebration and you ask for the national anthem and that has to be decided within the team as well, which we’ve talked about before,” he said.