An unnamed Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday that at least 5,000 people were killed during the regime crackdown on protests last week.
The Iranian resistance claimed that at least 127 prisoners were executed between January 5 and January 15, including three women.
The Iranian official who spoke to Reuters claimed 500 of the deaths were security personnel killed by the protesters, who had supposedly been provided with weapons by “Israel and armed groups abroad.”
The regime official further claimed that many of the civilian casualties were “innocent Iranians” killed by “terrorists and armed rioters.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave a speech on Saturday in which he admitted that “thousands” were killed, “some in an inhuman, savage manner” – but he blamed all of the deaths on the United States and Israel.
“Those linked to Israel and the U.S. caused massive damage and killed several thousand. We consider the U.S. president criminal for the casualties, damages and slander he inflicted on the Iranian nation,” Khamenei said.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which has published higher casualty estimates than the regime throughout the uprising, said on Saturday it has confirmed 3,308 deaths and has 4,382 reported fatalities under review. HRANA said this was a higher death toll than any unrest in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an opposition group headquartered outside the country, said on Saturday it has received reports of 127 prisoners executed by the regime. The NCRI press release proceeded to name all of the executed prisoners.
A group of Iranian doctors provided a report to the Sunday Times of London that claimed “at least 16,500 protesters have died and 330,000 have been injured, most of them in two days of utter slaughter in the most brutal crackdown by the clerical regime in its 47-year existence.”
According to this report, most of the victims killed by the regime were under the age of 30. The doctors said many of the victims died in their hospitals because regime thugs would not allow the victims to receive blood transfusions.
Thousands of the injured suffered severe damage to their eyes from shotgun blasts and pellet guns. The Iranian doctors said security forces are aggressively arresting people who have visible eye damage or pellet scars because they were presumably at the protests.
Prof. Amir Parasta, an Iranian German eye surgeon who helped found the doctor network during the 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising, said the crackdown this time was extraordinarily brutal.
“[In 2022] they were using rubber bullets and pellet guns taking out eyes. This time they are using military-grade weapons and what we are seeing are gunshot and shrapnel wounds in the head, neck and chest,” he said, speaking to the Times via the Starlink satellite network, because the regime is still blocking most Internet connections.
“This is genocide under the cover of digital darkness. They said they would kill until this stops and that’s what they are doing,” he said.
“Tell the whole world that on Friday they sprayed everyone with gunfire. The IRGC forces were calmly trying to aim for people’s heads,” said a survivor of the massacre. The IRGC is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the theocratically controlled wing of the Iranian media, which handles both terrorism abroad and oppression at home.
The Times cited reports of Shiite militia fighters being transported from Iraq by bus to help with murdering the protesters
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