As the Iranian authorities impose a near-total communication blackout on a country convulsed by mass protests, videos and witness accounts slowly emerging suggest that the government is waging one of its deadliest crackdowns on unrest in more than a decade.
Eyewitnesses say government forces have begun opening fire, apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately, on unarmed protesters. Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures. One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation”.
Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran: rows and rows of body bags.
In videos uploaded by Opposition activists on social media, families can be seen sobbing as they huddle together over bloodied corpses in unzipped bags. And in footage aired on Iranian state television, a morgue official, sheathed in blue scrubs, stands amid bags neatly arranged along the floor of a white room, under glaring fluorescent lights.
“The majority of these people are ordinary people,” the official says, sighing and shaking his head. “Their families are just ordinary families.”
Those who still support Iran’s theocratic government and those in the streets calling for its downfall agree: These are days of brutality unlike anything they have ever seen.
The toll of dead and injured across the country is unclear. Human rights groups are struggling to reach their contacts inside Iran and follow the methodology they normally use to verify information but say they have counted hundreds dead already.
A senior Iranian health ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said about 3,000 people had been killed across the country but sought to shift the blame to “terrorists” fomenting unrest. The figure included hundreds of security officers, he said.
Another government official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he had seen an internal report that referred to at least 3,000 dead, and added that the toll could climb.
If confirmed, the violence would be among the worst in recent Iranian history.
Witnesses spoke of seeing snipers positioned on rooftops in downtown Tehran and firing into crowds; of peaceful protests turning abruptly into scenes of carnage and panic as bullets pierced through people’s heads and torsos, sending bodies toppling to the ground; and of an emergency room treating 19 gunshot patients in a single hour.
“The regime is on a killing spree,” said one protester, Yasi. She, like other Iranians interviewed by The New York Times, asked that her full name be withheld for safety.
New York Times News Service