Iranian authorities have plunged the nation into what witnesses describe as a near-total digital blackout in response to lethal nationwide protests towards the Islamic republic, sharply limiting the circulate of knowledge from contained in the nation.
With web entry severely restricted, solely fragmented accounts have reached the surface world by transient one-way telephone calls, people with satellite tv for pc web entry, and Iranians who’ve just lately left the nation.
The protests erupted in late December 2025 amid mounting public anger over financial hardship, hovering inflation, and the sharp depreciation of the Iranian rial. Preliminary demonstrations over dwelling prices and financial mismanagement rapidly unfold to a number of cities and advanced into broader antiestablishment protests, prompting a lethal safety response.
Human rights organizations say a number of thousand individuals have been killed or injured in the course of the unrest, although impartial verification stays unattainable as a result of blackout. Eyewitnesses and medical professionals chatting with RFE/RL’s Radio Farda describe hospitals overwhelmed by sufferers affected by extreme gunshot wounds, significantly to the top, eyes, chest, and stomach.
One protester from the northeastern metropolis of Mashhad who just lately fled Iran mentioned he witnessed safety forces violently confronting youngsters throughout demonstrations. The protester described one teenager struggling extreme facial accidents after being struck with batons, whereas one other was shot within the leg and later required amputation.
Hospitals Overwhelmed
Some witnesses additionally described indicators of violence seen in public areas after demonstrations ended. “The following morning in Haft-e Tir, all of the streets had been being washed,” one other Mashhad resident who just lately left Iran instructed Radio Farda. “My partner had seen it; every little thing was coated in blood.”
Well being-care employees inside Iran report excessive stress on medical amenities. In a single recorded account, a member of the medical employees described an acute scarcity of specialists, together with neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, and ophthalmologists, as sufferers arrived with shotgun pellet wounds, significantly to the top and face.
Radio Farda can not independently confirm casualty figures or particular person claims. Nonetheless, medical doctors inside and outdoors Iran say the dimensions and sample of accidents counsel widespread use of dwell ammunition and pellet weapons.
Shahram Kordasti, director of analysis at King’s Faculty London’s School of Oncology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, mentioned colleagues in Iran reported an unusually excessive variety of eye and head accidents.
“The quantity was so giant that specialised eye hospitals may now not cope,” he mentioned, including that shortages of medical provides and difficulties reaching hospitals had worsened the disaster.
Hospitals are additionally dealing with extreme blood shortages. Roozbeh Esfandiari, a former emergency doctor in Tehran now based mostly in the US, urged Iranians with O-positive and O-negative blood varieties to donate blood urgently.
Iranian newspapers have printed restricted however troubling experiences. Tehran-based each day Ham-Mihan reported that the brother of a 30-year-old protester mentioned the person was alive and talking within the hospital earlier than abruptly collapsing and dying from a gunshot wound to the decrease stomach. One other witness instructed Radio Farda {that a} man was killed by a number of bullets whereas making an attempt to rescue a wounded pal and that the household was pressured to pay a big sum to retrieve the physique.
Eye Accidents
The Iranian each day Shargh reported that eye accidents make up a big share of protest-related casualties. Tehran’s Farabi Eye Hospital, the nation’s primary ophthalmology middle, has reportedly been working at full capability.
Amir-Mobarez Parasta, head of the Munich Eye Middle, instructed Radio Farda that damage figures had been unprecedented. “I’m in touch with ophthalmologists inside Iran,” he mentioned. “In only one non-public eye clinic in Tehran, 6,000 eye accidents have been recorded thus far. College hospitals throughout main cities equivalent to Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz, and Tabriz have collectively documented no less than 600 circumstances involving eye elimination.”
Eyewitnesses and medical employees additionally reported a heavy safety presence at hospitals, with armed forces limiting entry and, in some circumstances, detaining sufferers earlier than therapy was accomplished.
Iranian International Minister Abbas Araqchi acknowledged on January 11 that some wounded people had been “completed off” by what he known as “terrorists,” not safety forces.
Medical doctors warn that many injured protesters stay in hiding, avoiding hospitals out of concern of arrest. Untreated gunshot wounds and infections, they are saying, place these people at severe threat of dying as Iran stays largely lower off from the surface world.
