A video is circulating on Iranian social media showing officers from the Bandar Abbas municipality destroying a single mother's shed has triggered a series of protests on the internet. The state-run Iran Labor News Agency, ILNA, reported on Thursday that the woman had set herself on fire.

According to Bandar Abbas mayor Abbas Aminzadeh, "They were building a house on occupied land. After several warnings and notifications for evacuation, the authorities demolished the building by official order."

ILNA quoted Aminzadeh's deputy, Esmaeil Movahedinejad, as saying, "No one lived in the half-built shed, and our emphasis on evacuating the house was more for the safety of the family--- and only one of the four walls of the shed were destroyed."

As the shed was being demolished, the woman suddenly set herself on fire. "She was taken to a hospital while suffering from an 18 percent burn, mostly in her left hand," Movahedinejad said

Similar incidents in Iran have led to public outcries on social media in Iran, including the case of Asieh Panahi.

Living with her daughter and granddaughter in a slum in Kermanshah, Panahi died on May 20 while preventing municipal officials from destroying her home.

A video posted on social media of Panahi's resistance to Kermanshah municipal agents showed that she threw herself into a loader's bucket. However, the details of her death are still unknown, with some reports suggesting she may have been beaten, which the Kermanshah municipality has denied.