The death of a young woman sparked rioting in Mahabad, an Kurdish city in northwestern Iran, The New York Times reported today.

Furious over the unexplained death of a chambermaid, ethnic Kurds in an Iranian provincial capital rioted on Thursday, apparently setting the fire that roared through the hotel where she had worked. Police officers used tear gas to disperse the crowds, according to news accounts, witnesses, and images posted on social media.

The anger, which appeared to have been smoldering for days in the city, Mahabad, spread over the mysterious circumstances surrounding the fate of the chambermaid, Farinaz Khosravani, 25, who on Monday plunged from a fourth-floor window of the city’s only four-star hotel, the Tara, Kurdish news media reported. Mahabad is the capital of West Azerbaijan Province, and its population is mostly Kurdish.

A resident of Mahabad who spoke the to the Times explained why the woman’s death sparked the riots.

He said that many in the city of 280,000, had read news on the Internet saying that Ms. Khosravani had been trying to escape an Iranian official who was threatening to rape her. According to those reports, the official had the help of the hotel’s owner, who had been promised a fifth star for helping arrange the official’s stay there.

There is no confirmation of what happened but activists are using the hashtag #JusticeForFarinaz on Twitter to spread the story. A Kurdish news site, Rudaw, reported that police using tear gas have confronted the rioters, and that 18 people have been injured.

According to a 2006 survey by the Council on Foreign Relations, Kurds make up about seven percent of Iran’s population. (Non-Persian ethnic groups make up roughly 40% of Iran’s population.) Like other ethnic minorities in Iran, Kurds are subject to official discrimination and repression.

[Photo: erd ezman / YouTube ]