Iran Protests: Activists Say Khomeini's House Torched By Protesters

Video Footage widely shared on social media shows dozens of people cheering as a flash of fire is sparked in a building said to be the ancestral home of the late founding father of Iran’s Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini.

Activist network 1500Tasvir says the house in his birth town of Khomeini, south of Tehran, was torched by protesters overnight.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency called the report “a lie," saying "the doors of the house of the late founder of the great revolution are open to the public."

Khomeini died in 1989. His ancestral house has since been converted into a museum.

Portraits of Khomeini have been torched or defaced by demonstrators since the September death of a 22-year-old woman in the custody of morality police triggered a wave of nationwide protests demanding more freedoms and women's rights.

The protest movement has grown to become one of the biggest threats to the clerical regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The unrest triggered a heavy-handed crackdown by security forces in which more than 340 people were killed, including dozens of children. Thousands of people have also been arrested. Five people have so far been sentenced to death over the protests.