Iran hospitals, morgues face body bag shortages, local sources say

Medical facilities in several Iranian cities are facing shortages of body bags as the number of people killed in nationwide protests rises, witnesses told Iran International, describing a heavy security presence at hospitals and morgues.

In messages received from inside Iran on Wednesday, sources said the shortage has led to the accumulation of protesters’ bodies in hospital halls and morgues, while security forces have intervened in the process of handing over the remains.

They said hospital entrances are being tightly controlled, medical staff and families are under pressure, and the registration of information related to the dead has been restricted, in an apparent effort to prevent the true number of those killed from becoming public.

In Khorramabad, the capital of Lorestan province in western Iran, local sources said around 200 to 250 bodies remained at Ashayer Hospital, with no capacity for proper handling or orderly release.

In Arak, in central Iran’s Markazi province, and in Gorgan, the capital of Golestan province in northeastern Iran, they said the number of those killed exceeded morgue capacity, resulting in delays and restrictions on transferring bodies.

Local sources said similar conditions were being seen in other cities, adding that the measures appeared aimed at concealing the scale of the killings and limiting the flow of information about protest casualties.