Iran protests
As the Iranian authorities impose a near-total communication blackout on a country convulsed by mass protests, videos and witness accounts slowly emerging suggest that govt is waging one of its deadliest crackdowns on unrest in more than a decade. Eyewitnesses say govt forces have begun opening fire, apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately, on unarmed protesters. Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures. One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation.”Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran: rows and rows of body bags. In videos uploaded by opposition activists on social media, families can be seen sobbing as they huddle together over bloodied corpses in unzipped bags. And in footage aired on Iranian state television, a morgue official, sheathed in blue scrubs, stands amid bags neatly arranged along the floor of a white room, under glaring fluorescent lights.”The majority of these people are ordinary people,” the official says, sighing and shaking his head. “Their families are just ordinary families.” Those who support Iran’s theocratic govt and those in the streets calling for its downfall agree: These are days of brutality unlike anything they have ever seen.The toll of dead and injured across the country is unclear. Human rights groups are struggling to reach their contacts inside Iran and follow the methodology they normally use to verify information but say they have counted hundreds dead already.A senior Iranian health ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said about 3,000 people had been killed across the country but sought to shift the blame to “terrorists” fomenting unrest. The figure included hundreds of security officers, he said. Another official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he had seen an internal report that referred to at least 3,000 dead, and added that the toll could climb. If confirmed, the violence would be among the worst in Iranian history.Witnesses spoke of seeing snipers positioned on rooftops in downtown Tehran and firing into crowds; of peaceful protests turning abruptly into scenes of carnage and panic as bullets pierced through people’s heads and torsos, sending bodies toppling to the ground; and of an emergency room treating 19 gunshot patients in a single hour. “The regime is on a killing spree,” said one protester, Yasi. On her request, her name has been withheld for safety.For the past five days, the Iranian authorities have shut down the internet, international phone lines and sometimes even domestic phone connections. That has left rights groups, scribes and families alike struggling to understand the scope of what has happened.But videos trickling out of the country and the messages of some Iranians who occasionally get satellite internet connections offer a devastating picture of bloodshed. “I managed to get connected for a few minutes just to say it’s a blood bath here,” Saeed, a businessman in Tehran, said. He said he was using a Starlink internet connection late on Sunday. In a sign of the scale of the crackdown, Khamenei govt has taken the unusual step of acknowledging that there have been large numbers of casualties, but has sought to portray the victims as primarily members of the security forces.Nine residents of Tehran, along with two doctors, said they had witnessed govt’s harder line firsthand. Two said that they had seen snipers firing down at crowds in the Sattarkhan and Pasvaran neighbourhoods of Tehran, and one recounted a security agent indiscriminately shooting at the crowd as he drove by.At Nikan Hospital in Tehran, a nurse said medical workers had been overwhelmed when 19 gunshot victims came in almost at once. At Shohada Hospital, a doctor said many protesters taken there were declared dead upon their arrival at the hospital.Saeed, the Tehran businessman, described a similar experience in the capital. “They take the injured protesters to the hospital and if they recover, arrest them,” he said. Whether the crackdown will intimidate protesters remains to be seen. But Saeed insisted that the killings would not stop the protesters. “People are not afraid anymore,” he said. Go to Source
