‘A massacre took place’: the 24 hours that bled Iran

He was also fond of politics. On January 8, the fashion student finished her classes at Tehran’s women-only Shariati College at around 7 p.m. and joined a group of anti-government protesters a short distance from the campus.

The Iranians had been protesting for more than a week, but Aminian knew that day was going to be different. The size of the protest was increasing With expansion into more cities, demands for governance change are growing louder. President Trump had threatened to intervene if security forces began firing. Adding to the increasing momentum, Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of the deposed Shahhad urged Iranians to take to the streets at the beginning of the Iranian weekend at 8 p.m.

Aminion could not survive that night. Speaking from outside Iran, her aunt Hali Nouri said, “She was a girl full of zest for life and a lover of design and fashion, whose dreams were buried by the violence of the oppressors of the Islamic Republic.”

Trump said on Wednesday that the killing of protesters has stoppedComments that appeared to reduce the likelihood of a U.S. strike against the regime. If so, it’s mainly because security forces unleashed an unprecedented wave of violence last weekend, which the Wall Street Journal said has created a tense situation in several Iranian cities.

Iran carried out the action Under the cover of internet shutdown And there is widespread disruption to phone services, so it is difficult to assess its true scale. Human rights groups are trying to gather a full account of the death toll, compiling evidence that includes photographs of body bags and testimony from relatives, medical workers and other witnesses.

But eyewitness accounts of local violence and estimates from human rights groups and intelligence services point to a bloodshed that far exceeds the death toll in previous protests, whatever the final death toll.

Iranian officials initially acknowledged the economic grievances that sparked the unrest in late December. But as pressure on the government increased, there was a change in rhetoric. As of last week, the head of the judiciary was warning that there would be no leniency for those aiding the Islamic Republic’s enemies, and other top officials were threatening war with foreign-sponsored terrorists.

On the afternoon of January 8, angry Iranians took to the streets in large numbers across the country – from Tehran to Isfahan to the religious city of Mashhad and dozens of smaller cities and towns – chanting and spray-painting slogans calling for the fall of the Islamic Republic and “death to the dictator”.

This time, regime forces were prepared to play a more lethal role in suppressing the protests. The paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and plainclothes volunteer Basij militia were deployed in large numbers across the country, often armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles. In one instance in western Tehran, security forces were seen with a heavy machine gun on a pickup truck, according to footage verified by Storyful, which is owned by Journal parent News Corp.

From her compound, Aminian set out with a group of friends to join a protest. According to witnesses, victims’ relatives and human rights groups, the turning point came around 8:30 p.m., when Iranian authorities shut down the internet across the country and escalated the crackdown.

“We are confident that the massacre began late Thursday night throughout the country,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran. “It was a complete war zone.”

A video filmed that evening in Naji Abad – which is near Aminyan’s school – shows protesters trapped in a street as the sound of gunfire echoes in the air. “They won’t let them go,” a voice in the video says. “They’re just shooting at them, killing them.”

Aminian’s mother was at home in the Kurdish city of Kermanshah in western Iran when her phone rang. This was his daughter’s friend. He said that Aminion had been murdered. According to Aminian’s uncle Nezar Minoui, the mother immediately got into a car with her husband and they drove to Tehran.

Aminian’s parents arrived in the Iranian capital early Friday morning. He found his daughter among hundreds of dead bodies. He was shot in the back of his head. Many of the other victims were young women who suffered injuries to their necks and faces.

The bodies should have remained where they were. The mother ignored the order and quietly took away her daughter’s body. They kept her lifeless form in the back of the car and drove for six hours, crying all the way.

Similar scenes of violence played out across the country that day, according to a half-dozen witnesses reached by video verified by the Journal, rights groups and Storyful. In Mashhad, Iran’s holiest city, the victims included Mahdi Salahshoor, a 50-year-old prominent sculptor and father of two. According to a family member who reached out to the Journal, he was shot with a Kalashnikov rifle on the night of January 8. Salahshur was unhappy with life under the Islamic Republic and often worried about the future of his son and daughter, the relative said.

“He was an incredibly kind, caring and family-loving person,” the relative said.

In the port city of Bushehr, a husband and wife were killed by direct fire near a mosque, according to Hangau, a Norway-based human rights group that has been tracking the victims. He left behind two small children.

In Karaj, a large industrial city west of Tehran, protesters were seen fleeing gunfire late Thursday, according to footage verified by Storyful.

“Life was relatively normal until around 8:00 pm on Thursday evening, when the internet was cut off,” said a doctor in an account shared by the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Soon after, he began to hear gunshots, screams, and sporadic explosions in Tehran: “I was called to the hospital. When I arrived, I saw that the nature of the injuries and the number of gunshot wounds had completely changed. The situation was completely different. Shot at close range, injuries leading to death.”

Residents described an extremely frightening and tense atmosphere in the capital, with the unrest more widespread and violent than before. One person said that when she went to the window to check the situation on the street, police outside shined their lights in her eyes and warned people over loudspeakers to stay away from windows.

While Aminian was attending the demonstration from her college, another protester reached by the Journal said he was headed to a gathering outside a police station in the Abuzar neighborhood of south Tehran and began chanting, “Down with the dictator, we want Pahlavi back,” in reference to the Shah’s son.

Security forces were on the streets and on the roof of the police station, he said, and soon began firing regular rounds from shotguns and Kalashnikovs.

The protester said he saw four people killed, their bodies taken away by security forces. Another person visited the site the next day and took photographs of the blood-stained pavement and an assault-rifle round he found. Video verified by Storyful showed protests, and state media showed footage of a local mosque burned after what it called a riot.

The protester said that in the fighting, not everyone ran away when the shooting started.

“Other protesters joined in,” he said. “They did not step back. They started pelting stones. In some cases, they set police motorcycles on fire.”

Estimates of the death toll vary widely, from the hundreds acknowledged by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday to the thousands estimated by some rights groups and intelligence services.

While most of the dead were protesters, human rights activists in Iran say more than 150 government forces have also been killed in the unrest.

The US-based group said it had confirmed more than 2,600 deaths and more than 18,400 arrests since protests began in late December. This would make the current crackdown in Iran the deadliest since the 1980s., When the government consolidated its power after the 1979 revolution, it executed thousands of political prisoners. According to Amnesty International, more than 2,600 people were killed in 1981 alone.

In regularly recurring protests over the past two decades, the regime has responded with increasing violence. Dozens of people were killed during the 2009 Green Movement protests over allegations of fraud in that year’s presidential election. According to Iran Human Rights, another Norway-based human rights monitor, 551 people were killed during protests in 2022 over mandatory veiling following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.

People reached by the Journal reported seeing large numbers of bodies in morgues and cemeteries and believed the death toll was higher than acknowledged by authorities.

Verified footage from various parts of the country shows Iranians searching for bodies of loved ones in makeshift or overcrowded morgues. At a morgue in south Tehran, video showed there was not enough room for all the dead, as bodies covered in white shrouds lay scattered on the street outside. Some bodies came in the back of pickup trucks. The government has held the rioters responsible for these deaths. Rights groups said they were protesters who were killed by live shots.

Iran’s top leaders are not hiding their harsh reaction. Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, in a speech on January 9, called the protesters agents of the enemy and called on security forces to deal with them with full force. The government lawyer escalated the protest by saying that those who destroyed property or took up arms could be charged as enemies of God, punishable by death.

That day the Intelligence Ministry sent a warning via text messages to Iranian mobile phones: “Dear parents, inform your children about the consequences of cooperating with terrorist mercenaries, which is an example of treason against the country.”

Araghchi now refers to January 8 as the 13th – a continuation of the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June.

The fierce crackdown by security forces has succeeded in clearing protesters from the streets in some cities, with some residents reporting an eerie calm after days of escalating violence. Families are burying their dead as best they can.

His family members said authorities did not allow Aminyan’s family to hold a condolence ceremony. They buried Aminian in an unmarked grave near Kermanshah last Friday. When her mother returned home, she saw security force members standing outside, so she decided to stay somewhere else.

“Mother can’t go anywhere now,” said uncle Nezar Minoi. “They’re following him like a shadow.”

Write to Benoit Faucon here benoit.faucon@wsj.com And on Margherita Stancati margherita.stancati@wsj.com