Iranian security forces have been accused of fatally shooting a 16-year-old Kurdish boy at point-blank range after the teen posted a prescient online post about death.

Komar Daroftadeh’s last Instagram post was a picture of him in the mountains with the caption: “We are the people of the Middle East, some of us will die in war, some in prison, some in the street, others drown in the sea. Even the rising mountains avenge their loneliness on us, because we are here to die.”

He was allegedly gunned down in his home city of Piranshahr, West Azerbaijan Province on 30th October.

An eyewitness told anti-regime media how a gunman shot the teenager from a stationary car without numberplates from just three metres (nine feet) away.

An anti-regime demo is known to have been going on at the time, but away from the spot where Komar was shot, the same onlooker alleged.

The eyewitness said he was with two other teenagers at the time, one of whom was taken away by security forces and whose fate remains unknown.

Komar was taken to Imam Khomeini Hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries later that day.

His father Hassan was filmed at his funeral on 31st October saying: “My son is a martyr, he was killed for freedom.”

The protests that erupted in Iran on 16th September have so far claimed the lives of around 320 people and injured at least 1,160, according to independent estimates.

Human rights groups have given the number of under-18s killed at 44.

Iranian ethnic minorities – including Kurds – are said to be disproportionately suffering from state repression.

Mahsa Amini – the 22-year-old whose alleged violent death at the hands of morality police triggered the ongoing protests – was also Kurdish.