UN rights chief urges Iran to end crackdown after 'thousands' killed

GENEVA - The U.N. human rights chief said on Friday that thousands of people, including children, had been killed in Iran's "brutal repression" on protests, appealing to the country's clerical authorities to end the crackdown.

"I call on the Iranian authorities to reconsider, to pull back, and to end their brutal repression," High Commissioner Volker Turk told an emergency session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He called the crackdown "a pattern of subjugation and overwhelming force that can never address people’s grievances and frustrations."

-Reporting by Emma Farge and Olivia Le Poidevin; editing by Matthias Williams/Reuters