ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iranian security forces opened fire on a vehicle on Monday, fatally shooting a five-year-old child in the southeastern province of Sistan and Balochestan, local activists reported on Tuesday. Both of the child's parents were injured.

“Security forces opened fire on a car, killing and injuring three people,” London-based Baloch Campaign, which monitors human rights violations in Sistan and Balochestan province, said on Tuesday. “The child's father was reportedly shot in the leg and his mother in the abdomen.”

The activists’ campaign reported a protest at the location where the shooting took place following the incident being dispersed.

The shooting occurred at a checkpoint west of the city of Iranshahr after police attempted to stop a Peugeot Pars car, according to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) linked Tasnim News Agency.

An occupant of the car allegedly shot at a police car and security forces retaliated, according to Tasnim, claiming two occupants fled the scene.

Tasnim said the boy and a middle aged woman were found in the back seat of the vehicle after the occupants fled the scene. The wounded child was taken to a medical center where he later died.

Video on social media showed a mother sobbing and crying in the Balochi language, "God, my child."

The Balochi area of Iran is among the most impoverished in the nation, with a large number of residents depending on irregular border trade to make a living. Alim Yarmohammadi, an MP from the province in the Iranian Parliament, says that at least three quarters of the province's population lives below the poverty line.

At least 21 Balochis have been executed since mid-December 2020 in Mashhad, Isfahan and Zahedan, according to a UN report from February, 2021. The report states the convictions were carried out under flawed legal processes, including torture. Experts also alleged "practices of enforced disappearances of persons belonging to minorities," stating ethnic minorities are "at risk" in Iran.

The IRGC killed ten fuel traders in the province of Sistan and Balochestan in February, causing clashes between protestors and government forces. Government buildings and police vehicles were torched and hundreds were detained in the aftermath.

A Balochi jihadist group in March claimed to have captured and killed members of the IRGC in the city of Saravan, following the deaths of the ten fuel traders.

Rudaw