Iran International has documented the deaths of more than six thousands people during recent protests in Iran whose names do not appear on an official government list published over the weekend.
“In a shameful attempt to downplay the scale of the largest street massacre in Iran’s contemporary history, Tehran has sought to cast doubt on the figures reported by Iran International,” the broadcaster’s editorial board said in a statement on Monday.
“Yet the statistics released by the government itself constitute further evidence of their dishonesty.”
The list published by Tehran includes 2,986 names. Fewer than 100 of those overlap with the 6,634 deaths compiled by Iran International since it issued a public call for documentation from families, witnesses and citizen journalists.
The information collected includes victims’ names, photographs, places of residence, circumstances of death and testimony from relatives, gathered despite severe internet restrictions and security pressure on families inside Iran.
Protests erupted in late December and escalated sharply on January 8 and 9, following a call for nationwide action by the exiled prince Reza Pahlavi. The demonstrations were met with a sweeping security crackdown in which thousands were killed and many more wounded or detained.
Iran International has previously put the death toll at at least 36,500, citing leaked official documents—a figure Tehran disputes.
The government’s release of an official “casualties list” appears to have been intended as a rebuttal to that report, but it has instead triggered a backlash.
Critics, including families of victims and activists, have pointed to alleged errors, duplicated identities, inconsistencies in official figures, and the absence of information about unidentified bodies and missing persons.
Iranian officials say the discrepancies stem from the presence of unidentified remains—a claim critics question given the scale of the state’s security and forensic apparatus.
You can read the full statement by Iran International’s editorial board here.
For families searching for wounded protesters in Iran’s latest crackdown, hospitals have offered no refuge—only dead ends.
One such case was described by the Wall Street Journal in a report on Sunday, which recounted the final hours of a teenage protester identified as Sam, shot and then taken away while still alive.
According to the paper, a medic told Sam’s family that he was “in critical condition being treated for a single gunshot wound in the back of his head,” before security forces arrived and removed him along with other patients.
The medic urged the family to look elsewhere. “The medic advised them to check the morgues,” Sam’s father, Parviz, said, according to the report.
They found him days later. “They found him inside a body bag on Jan. 11 with a second bullet wound that tore through half of his face and made him almost unrecognizable,” Parviz told the Journal.
The second shot—delivered after medical care had begun—was not an act of mercy. It was finalization.
Similar accounts have emerged from Karaj, west of Tehran, where witnesses told Iran International that armed forces surrounded hospitals following days of mass killings and resistance.
Witnesses speaking to Iran International on the condition of anonymity report the abduction of wounded protesters from hospitals and the execution of injured people who were unable to move.
A Karaj taxi driver, who said he witnessed the violence firsthand, described security forces loading both dead and wounded protesters into trucks without distinction.
“Even the wounded were not separated from the dead. They piled everyone together. Someone injured like that will die anyway,” he said.
A photo received by Iran International showed the body of a deceased protester at Kahrizak morgue south of Tehran with his hands bound.
In the image, the man’s body is seen inside a black body bag typically used for those killed, with his hands tied and placed on his abdomen.
The image appeared to show that the citizen was in the custody of security forces at the time of his death and that he died while in detention.
Other witnesses said the killings continued inside medical facilities. One source told Iran International that agents used suppressed weapons. “That person was crying and saying they were shooting the wounded with silenced guns,” the witness said, describing what was explicitly referred to as a finishing shot.
Hospitals including Ghasem Soleimani, Kasra and Takht-e Jamshid were placed under armed lockdown, according to eyewitness reports, with families barred from entry and medical staff working under threat.
One healthcare worker said more than 400 people killed during January 8-9 were brought to Karaj hospitals alone.
The practice has been documented elsewhere. The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center previously reported that one wounded protester, terrified of being executed in hospital, remained motionless for three days inside a plastic body bag used for transporting corpses. His family eventually located him alive in Kahrizak.
In Karaj, fear of those final shots drove families to keep bodies hidden at home rather than risk official channels. According to reports and accounts obtained by Iran International, authorities halted burials, closed morgues, and restricted funerals to a single family member, firing shots into the air to disperse mourners.
What emerges from these accounts is not chaos but method.
Wounded protesters—those who survived initial gunfire—appear to have been treated as liabilities. Removing them from hospitals, or killing them outright, ensured that testimony would not survive.
Sam’s father said his son had dreamed of studying information technology in Germany, where he planned to reunite with him. Instead, he was shot once, treated, and then shot again.
The second bullet did what the first did not.
