Iran’s security forces shot and killed a 24-year-old protester during demonstrations in the city of Yazdanshahr in central Iran, a source close to the family told Iran International.
Soheil Zilabi, a resident of Yazdanshahr, was killed on Friday, January 9, 2026, after security forces opened fire on protesters in the street, an informed source told Iran International.
The source said that Zilabi was present at the Yazdanshahr protests on January 9 when security forces shot him in the head on Motahari Boulevard.
He was taken later that night to Fatemeh Zahra Hospital, where he died, the source said.
According to the source, security forces handed over only Zilabi’s bloodstained clothes to his family and told them to go to the Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery in Isfahan to receive his body.
The family went to Bagh-e Rezvan for days and Zilabi’s body was handed over five days later, the source said.
“Soheil was an extremely kind and lovable young man,” the relative said. “His mother raised Soheil and his two sisters with great hardship,” the source said.
The source added that Zilabi had returned from military service about a year and a half earlier and worked as a car paint color-matching assistant, leaving for work at 5 a.m. and working until 5 p.m.
Japan decided on Satruday to evacuate some staff from its embassy in Tehran, a day after issuing an evacuation warning for its citizens from the country.
Citing the suspension or reduction of international flights, the Japanese government urged its citizens to leave Iran as soon as safe travel becomes possible.
Japan also issued a level-one travel advisory, calling for heightened caution, for the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar, three neighboring countries that host US military bases.
The Islamic Republic is prolonging its internet shutdown rather than confronting the country’s underlying problems, portraying the move as a deliberate choice to deepen isolation, wrote the Persian-language account of the US Department of State on X.
“Instead of addressing the country’s real challenges, the Islamic Republic chooses to impose silence and isolation, underscoring how little confidence it has in its own legitimacy,” the post said.
A spokesperson for the Islamic Republic earlier announced that the internet shutdown will continue until late March, prolonging an isolation that Iranians have already endured for more than 216 hours, added the State Department.
Iran’s internet shutdown is “in line with common international practices,” Tasnim, a news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, said without specifying which standards justify a nationwide blackout.
Fars News, another IRGC-linked outlet, also reported that private chats and group activity online will only be available on domestic messaging platforms.
Reza Eskandarpour, 37, was killed by direct gunfire during protests on January 8 in the Ariashahr neighborhood of Tehran, sources confirmed to Iran International.
Eskandarpour, born in October 1988 and a resident of, was shot dead by security forces, according to reports received by Iran International.
Eskandarpour was protesting with five friends when one of them was shot by security agents, sources said. He returned to help his wounded friend, at which point a sniper linked to security forces opened fire from a rooftop.
He was hit by six live rounds and killed at the scene. Two other people accompanying him were also killed at the same time.
Eskandarpour owned a cabinet-making workshop in Ariashahr and was preparing to get married, according to people close to him.