Iranian authorities are installing cameras in public places to identify and penalise unveiled women in an attempt to rein in the increasing numbers who are defying the country’s strict dress rules.

Those deemed to be violating Iran’s hijab rules will receive “warning text messages as to the consequences”, police in Iran say.

The move is aimed at “preventing resistance against the hijab law”, the police statement, carried by the judiciary’s Mizan news agency and other state media, said.

It added that such resistance tarnishes Iran’s spiritual image and spreads insecurity.

A growing number of Iranian women have been ditching their veils since the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman while in custody of the morality police last September.

Mahsa Amini had been detained for allegedly violating the hijab rule.

Her death has sparked huge nationwide protests and security forces have responded violently.

An Interior Ministry statement last month described the veil as “one of the civilisational foundations of the Iranian nation” and “one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic” and said there would be no retreat on the issue.

Under Iran’s Islamic sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures. Violators have faced public rebuke, fines or arrest.

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The news about cameras comes after two women in Iran who went into a store while not fully covering their hair had yoghurt thrown over them by a man.

CCTV footage showing the “yoghurt attack”, believed to have taken place in the city of Shandiz in northeast Iran, went viral on social media.