A 53-year-old Iranian man was shot dead with what live ammunition while taking out his household trash, as videos and witness accounts point to a pattern of security forces firing on bystanders during unrest last month.
Behzad Nikyar, also known as Behzad Kimasi Selkhori, was killed on the evening of January 9 in the city of Qazvin, according to relatives who spoke to Iran International.
They said he was not taking part in protests and had walked a few meters from his home to leave a garbage bag at the end of his alley when he was struck.
The bullet entered one side of his body and exited the other as he was returning home, relatives said.
A video said to have been filmed the following morning shows blood stains along an alley in the Khaghani area of Qazvin, which family members say trace the path Nikyar tried to crawl back to his front door. He later died of his injuries. He was the father of one daughter, according to those accounts.
Nikyar’s death comes amid a wave of social media videos and testimonies alleging that security forces opened fire on pedestrians on January 8, 9 and 10, including people described by witnesses as not participating in demonstrations.
One video from Tehran’s Sattarkhan district, recorded by a building’s surveillance camera and circulated online, appears to show three people walking along a sidewalk when two armed men on a motorcycle stop ahead of them and fire in their direction without visible warning.
In Mashhad, a man was shot in the neck on the evening of January 9 while buying groceries about 50 meters from security forces, according to a witness account sent to Iran International.
In the northern city of Rasht, a resident said his elderly mother was hit by multiple pellet rounds in the head and legs after leaving a pharmacy at dusk that day. Another report described a pregnant woman shot outside a pharmacy in Isfahan.
Separately, a 16-year-old boy, Kasra Vafapour, was killed by a gunshot wound to the heart on January 9, according to citizen reports, which said he had gone out to buy medicine for his younger sister.
Residents from several cities, including Neyshabur, Borujerd and Sari, have said that security forces fired pellet rounds “indiscriminately” at passersby in recent weeks.
At least 36,500 people have been killed during the national uprising. Tens of thousands more have been reported injured or detained.
