Eyewitnesses describe deadly crackdown across country

“I saw this with my own eyes; they shot directly into the line of protesters and people fell to the ground where they were standing.”

Omid’s voice shook as he spoke because he was afraid of being followed. It takes great courage to break the wall of silence between Iran and the rest of the world, given the risk of retaliation from the authorities.

Omid, a man in his early 40s whose name we have changed for his safety, has been protesting on the streets of a small city in southern Iran over the past few days against worsening economic difficulties.

He said security forces opened fire on unarmed protesters in his city with Kalashnikov-style assault rifles.

“We are opposing a brutal regime with empty hands,” he said.

The BBC received similar accounts of crackdowns by security forces Following widespread protests across the country last week.

Since then, internet access has been shut down by the authorities, making reporting from Iran more difficult than ever. BBC Persian has been banned from reporting in Iran by the government.

One of the largest anti-government protests nationwide took place on Thursday, the twelfth night of demonstrations. Following the calls made on Thursday and Friday, many people appear to have joined the protests. Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of the last shah of Iran Person who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The next day, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said: “The Islamic Republic will not step backThe biggest bloodshed appears to have occurred after this warning, as the security forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard took the order from him.

Iranian officials accused the United States and Israel of causing trouble and condemned “terrorist actions,” according to state media reports.

A young woman from Tehran said last Thursday felt like “doomsday”.

“Even the remote neighborhoods of Tehran were filled with protesters; places you wouldn’t believe,” he said.

“But on Friday the security forces just killed and killed and killed. Seeing this with my own eyes disturbed me so much that I completely lost my morale. Friday was a bloody day.”

He said people are afraid to go out after Friday’s killings, and many are now chanting from side streets and their homes.

He said Tehran was a battlefield, with protesters and security forces taking positions and hiding in the streets.

However, he added: “In the war, both sides have weapons. Here people are just chanting slogans and being killed. This is a one-sided war.”

Eyewitnesses in the city of Fardis, just west of Tehran, said on Friday that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) paramilitary Basij force suddenly attacked protesters after hours when there was no police on the streets.

According to eyewitnesses, uniformed and motorcycle-mounted forces fired live ammunition directly at the protesters. It was stated that unmarked vehicles were driven into side streets and residents who did not participate in the protests were fired upon.

“Two or three people were killed in every alleyway,” said an eyewitness.

Those who spoke to BBC Persian say the reality in Iran is difficult for the outside world to imagine and that the death toll reported so far by international media represents only a small fraction of their own estimates.

International news organizations are not allowed to operate freely in Iran and rely mostly on Iranian human rights groups operating outside the country. On Monday, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) said at least 648 protesters had been killed in Iran, including nine people under the age of 18.

Some local sources and eyewitnesses report very high numbers of people killed in different cities, ranging from hundreds to thousands.

The BBC is currently unable to independently verify these figures, and Iranian authorities have so far not provided official or transparent statistics on the number of deaths of protesters.

However, Iranian media reported that 100 security personnel were killed during the protests, and that protesters, whom they called “rioters”, set fire to dozens of mosques and banks in various cities.

Videos verified by BBC Persian’s fact-checking team also show police vehicles and some government buildings being set on fire in different locations during the protests.

The testimonies and videos sent to BBC Persian come mostly from major cities such as Tehran, nearby Karaj, Rasht in the north, Mashhad in the northeast and Shiraz in the south. These areas have greater access to the internet via the Starlink satellite network.

Information from small towns where many premature deaths occur is scant because their access to Starlink is so limited.

But the volume, consistency and similarity of testimonies from various cities point to the seriousness of the crackdown and the widespread use of lethal violence.

Nurses and paramedics who spoke to the BBC said they saw many dead and injured protesters.

They report this Hospitals in many cities are overwhelmed and unable to treat people with serious injuries, especially to the head and eyes. Some witnesses reported that bodies were “piled up” and not returned to families.

Graphic videos posted Sunday on the activist-run Telegram channel Vahid Online showed scores of bodies mourning or trying to identify bodies at the Kahrizak Forensic Center in Tehran.

In one of the videos, which appears to belong to Kahrizak, relatives of a corpse are seen looking at photographs of unidentified corpses on the screen.

Numerous bodies with black bags were seen in the facility and on the street outside, but only some of them appear to have been identified.

One of the videos shows the inside of a warehouse with many bodies, while the other shows a truck being unloaded, with people removing the bodies.

A morgue worker at a cemetery in Mashhad said that before sunrise Friday morning, 180 to 200 bodies with severe head injuries were brought in and buried immediately.

A source in Rasht told BBC Persian that the bodies of 70 protesters were transferred to a hospital morgue in the city on Thursday. According to the source, security forces demanded “payment of the lead price” before handing over the bodies to the families.

At the same time, medical staff at a hospital in eastern Tehran told BBC Persian on Thursday that around 40 bodies were brought there the same day. The name of the hospital was kept secret to protect the doctor’s identity.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement on Sunday that he was “shocked by reports that Iranian authorities have used violence and excessive force against protesters in recent days, resulting in deaths and injuries.”

Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, told BBC Persian: “I would like to emphasize that regardless of the death toll, the use of lethal force by security forces is alarming.”