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Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini was visiting Tehran with her family when she encountered the notorious morality police and died after a "violent blow to the head", her cousin living in Iraq said.

"Jhina's death has opened the doors of popular anger," said Erfan Salih Mortezaee, 34, using Amini's Kurdish first name and referring to the ongoing wave of protests that her death has sparked.

In a phone call after the young woman's death was announced, Amini's mother told him what happened when her 22-year-old daughter was detained, Mortezaee said.

AFP spoke with Mortezaee in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region -- bordering Amini's native Kurdistan province in Iran -- where he has been living for a year.

There he joined Iranian Kurdish nationalist group Komala, which has conducted a long-running cross-border insurgency against the Tehran authorities, seeking autonomy for Kurdish-populated areas of northwestern Iran.

Read more: Explained: Iran's morality police, hijab and violent protests over woman's death

Mortezaee said that, before starting university, Amini had gone to Tehran with her parents and 17-year-old brother to visit relatives.

On September 13, Amini, her brother and female relatives went out in the capital.

On leaving the Haghani underground station, "the morality police stopped them, arresting Jhina and her relatives," Mortezaee said.

Wearing military fatigues and speaking at a Komala base in the Sulaimaniyah area of northern Iraq, Mortezaee said Amini's brother tried to tell the police that they were "in Tehran for the first time" and "did not know the (local) traditions".

But his appeals fell on deaf ears.

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Mahsa Amini died of 'blow to the head': family in Iraq - Hindustan Times