Iranian security forces clashed with students at a prominent university in Tehran on Sunday, social and state media reported, in the latest sign of a deadly clampdown on nationwide protests that were ignited by the death in custody of a young woman.

Video posted on social media and obtained by Reuters, shows a crowd dispersing and shouting on a street outside the university. In the video, several people standing on an overpass overlooking the street scene yelled insults toward police officers below, while the sound of what appears to be gunfire can be heard in the distance.

Reuters was able to verify the location of the video from the university building and the road layout seen in the footage which matched file imagery of the area. Reuters was not able to independently verify the date it was filmed.

The anti-government protests, which began at 22-year-old Mahsa Amini's funeral on Sept. 17 in the Kurdish town of Saqez, have spiralled into the biggest show of opposition to Iran's authorities in years, with many calling for the end of more than four decades of Islamic clerical rule.

Students had been protesting at numerous universities on Sunday and demonstrations were held in several cities such as Tehran, Yazd, Kermanshah, Sanandaj, Shiraz and Mashhad, with participants chanting "independence, freedom, death to Khamenei," earlier social media posts showed.