Human rights groups and others have condemned the execution of a woman in Iran who was found guilty of killing the man she was forced to marry as a child.
Amnesty International said it "is horrified by reports" of the "chilling execution" in Iran of Samira Sabzian, a mother of two.
Sabzian was reportedly hanged at dawn on December 20 in Ghezel Hesar prison in the Tehran satellite city of Karaj, according to human rights groups, although Iranian state media have not reported it.
She had been in prison for the past decade. Iran carried out the execution despite an international campaign for clemency.
In a social-media post, Amnesty International called on the international community to "urgently call on Iran's authorities to immediately establish an official moratorium on executions," noting that at least 115 people had been executed in Iran in November alone.
Amnesty noted that Sabzian had been convicted under the principle of "qesas" -- retribution-in-kind -- for the killing of the man she was forced to marry as a child.
"At the sentencing stage, qesas entails a mandatory death penalty for homicide, removing the ability of courts to consider relevant evidence and potentially mitigating circumstances such as history of abuse and trauma when issuing a sentence," the global human rights watchdog explained.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group said Sabzian was a child bride who had married her husband at the age of 15 and had been a victim of domestic violence, according to relatives.
"Samira was a victim of years of gender apartheid, child marriage, and domestic violence, and today she fell victim to the incompetent and corrupt regime's killing machine," Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of IHR, said.
The office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights said it was "alarmed" by the execution.
"We again urge Iran to establish a moratorium on all executions with a view to abolishing death penalty," it added, AFP reported.
Her execution comes as concern grows over the number of people executed this year by Iran, where hundreds of people have been hanged mainly on drug and murder charges, including more than a dozen women.