More than 30,000 people may have been killed over just two days during the initial wave of protests that swept Iran in early January, according to internal data from Iran's Health Ministry cited by Time magazine.
Two senior officials at the Iranian Health Ministry said that on January 8 and 9 there was a "dramatic spike" in fatalities as security forces opened fire on protesters nationwide, including the use of snipers positioned on rooftops and trucks mounted with heavy machine guns. According to the officials, the death toll was so high that evacuation systems collapsed, body bags ran out, and heavy trucks were used in place of ambulances.
The internal figure, which has not previously been made public, is vastly higher than the official toll of 3,117 deaths announced on January 21 by regime bodies that report directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. At the same time, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it has so far verified 5,459 deaths and is reviewing an additional 17,031 cases. Time noted, however, that these figures could not be independently verified.
A German-Iranian ophthalmologist, who collected data from hospitals and medical teams, reported that the number of deaths recorded in civilian medical facilities stood at 30,304 as of last Friday. He said the figure does not include people treated at military hospitals or cases from areas that were inaccessible.
Iran's National Security Council said the protests took place at about 4,000 different locations across the country. "We are getting closer to reality, but I believe the true number is even higher," the doctor said.
According to eyewitnesses, after a total shutdown of the internet and communications, snipers on rooftops and trucks armed with heavy machine guns opened fire on demonstrators. An officer in Iran's Revolutionary Guards even warned during a live broadcast that "if a bullet hits you, don't complain." Only days later did images of bloodied bodies begin circulating online, transmitted via illicit Starlink satellite internet connections.
Experts on mass violence compared the scale of the killing to exceptional events in modern history. Prof. Les Roberts of Columbia University said that "most killings on this scale are carried out by bombing, not gunfire," adding that the only historical comparison found in online datasets was the Babi Yar massacre in 1941, in which about 33,000 Jews were shot dead over two days.
