(JPost) — Iranian police have started cracking down on water fights springing up across the country with the arrests of several young men and women who took part in the latest organized water pistol battles.

A water fight in a Tehran park on Friday, thought to have been organized through social media websites, was broken up by police who arrested several of the revelers, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Sunday.

“Some of these rebels who intended to play water fight were arrested by police on Friday,” Ahmadreza Radan, Tehran’s deputy police chief, told Mehr.

Mingling between sexes outside marriage is banned in Iran and conservatives in the Islamic Republic have been scandalized by scenes of dozens of youngsters spraying each other with water in public.

Various websites have posted photographs of girls and boys in wet clothes throwing water balloons, firing water guns and splashing each other with water from bottles after the first water fights were reported in the capital a few weeks ago.

The fights have since spread across the country despite warnings from authorities.