Thousands of angry students at Tehran University's main dormitory complex called on Khomeini who under Iran's Islamic system has final say in all matters of state to guarantee personally the arrest and prosecution of those responsible for the assault, abetted by elements of the police, on Thursday night and early Friday morning.

Earlier, scattered students in the crowd chanted slogans against the leader, a figure generally above public criticism of any kind. Breaking the taboo on criticism against Khomeini would mark a major turning point in the pro-democracy protests.

Some chanted against his alleged support of Ansar-e Hezbollah, the Islamic vigilantes who attacked the students. ``Ansar commits crimes, and the leader supports them,'' and ``Oh, great leader, shame on you,'' shoutedsome in the crowd before their colleagues silenced them.

There were also reports from the holy city of Qom that some senior clerics had come out in support of the students, closing their seminary lectures in protest.

Iran's biggest student movement, which claims 50,000 members across Iran's campuses, said the attack by police and members of Ansar-e Hezbollah, one of the so-called pressure groups, could not have occurred without high-level support.

``The leader should take responsibility for the affair. We cannot accept that such an attack with clubs and other weapons was carried out on their own initiative,'' a leader of the movement, the office to consolidate unity, told the crowd at the dormitory complex.

Scores of students were injured, some seriously, in the melee. Campus leaders say up to five classmates were killed.

There has so far been no official confirmation of the deaths, but President Mohammad Khatami's political faction and a leading Shiite cleric have publicly condemned what they saidwere the deaths of innocent students.To date no one has identified who gave the order for police to attack the students, but Iran's top security body late yesterday said it would dismiss any official found to have done so. Students, however, say they want nothing short of the removal of the hardline police chief, or even his execution.