Trump calls Khamenei a 'sick man', says it's time for new leadership in Iran

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.

Sara Behboodi, a 45-year-old mountaineer, was killed during protests in Iran, IranWire website reported Saturday.

Behboodi was shot with live ammunition by Islamic Republic security forces on the evening of January 9 in the northern city of Rasht.

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.