Death toll grows as nationwide protests rock Iran for a third night

Parisa, a 35-year-old Tehran, Iran, resident, was on the streets marching with a large but peaceful crowd chanting, “Death to the dictator,” Friday night, when the scene suddenly turned deadly, she said in a series of voice messages from Iran’s capital.

Four security agents swarmed a middle-aged man and his teenage son who had been standing at a corner, cheering on the crowd and joining in the anti-government chants. The officers opened fire, killing the father, said Parisa, who asked that her last name not be published out of fear of retribution.

The son screamed, his cries mingling with the crowd’s, as some fled and others began cursing and throwing rocks at the security forces. Parisa said that she had noticed the man bending down to fix his shoe, adding that perhaps the security forces had believed he was reaching for a weapon. But she saw none.

“Everyone is scared, everyone is anxious, everyone is anticipating the violence to increase,” Parisa said. “Today at work, all my colleagues were depressed, talking about the size of the guns and killings they have seen.”

“But you know what?” she added. “Everyone still is going out to protest.”

For a third night in a row, nationwide anti-government protests rocked Iran, according to witnesses and videos verified by The New York Times, posted on BBC Persian and social media, even as the government intensified its crackdown and the military said it would take to the streets in response to the unrest.

In Heravi Square in Tehran, thousands of people marched through the streets, clapping rhythmically and chanting slogans against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, videos verified by the Times showed. “You can’t see the start and end of the crowd,” shouted a protester moving the camera.

Videos and information from Saturday’s protests were hard to obtain, trickling in only with hours of delay, as the government maintained the internet blackout it imposed Thursday and blocked calls from abroad. Iran’s Telecommunication Ministry said in a statement that security officials had decided to shut down the internet because of the “situation unfolding in the country.” But the death toll appeared to be rising.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have not updated their casualty numbers since Thursday, when both were reporting 28 protest-related deaths. But two other rights groups focused on Iran, the Washington-based HRANA and the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Center, each said their tally was about 70 killed, among them minors and about 20 members of the security forces.

The Iran Human Rights Center said that Rubina Aminian, a 23-year-old college student, died when she was shot in the head Thursday after leaving her college campus and joining protests in Marivan, a Kurdish city in northwest Iran.

“The situation is extremely worrisome; this regime has always prioritized its survival over all else, and it will do so again, at the cost of people’s lives,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Iran Human Rights Center.

Amiry-Moghaddam also said his organization had received reports from doctors in Iran that hospitals were running out of blood and emergency rooms were overwhelmed with patients with serious injuries, including gunshot wounds and pellet-gun injuries to eyes.

Videos verified by the Times showed armed men firing weapons along empty streets in two Iranian cities over the past two days, in an apparent effort to intimidate residents and would-be protesters.

One video showed security forces firing long guns in Zahedan on Iran’s eastern border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Anti-government protests were reportedly held in there after Friday prayers. Security camera footage captured security forces walking along a main commercial street beside the city’s Grand Mosque, firing shots into side streets after earlier firing tear gas at worshippers exiting the mosque.

Another video, also verified by the Times, showed a group of gunmen on motorcycles firing their weapons along a commercial street in the southern city of Kazerun on Saturday. An Iranian rights group reported Thursday that security forces had opened fire to disperse a rally in Kazerun.

On Saturday, a crowd chanted “Freedom, Freedom, Freedom,” in Persian and English under rainy skies in Kaj Square in the capital, a video on BBC Persian showed. They appeared undeterred by the stream of threatening remarks from senior government and judiciary officials throughout the day.

Mohammad Movahedi Azad, Iran’s attorney general, said Saturday that legal proceedings against rioters should be undertaken “without leniency, mercy or appeasement,” according to Iranian media, and he warned that “all criminals involved” would be considered an “enemy of God,” a charge that could carry the death penalty.

President Donald Trump, who had previously said that the United States would intervene militarily if Iran killed protesters, said in a post on social media Saturday that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help.”

He has been briefed in recent days on new options for military strikes in Iran, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Iran’s armed forces said in a statement that they would begin taking to the streets to protect “strategic infrastructure and public property,” because of widespread destruction and burning of public and government properties, according to footage on Iran’s state television.

The protests, now in their second week, have included large-scale peaceful marches with a sometimes festive feel: crowds of men, women and families singing and chanting slogans. There have also been angry riots of mostly men blocking the roads with bonfires and setting ablaze municipal and government buildings, banks, mosques, and police stations, according to videos on Iran’s state television, BBC Persian and social media.

Iranian state media said Farajollah Shooshtari, the deputy governor of security and politics in the province of Semnan and the son of a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guard, had been killed in the protests.

Tehran’s mayor, Alireza Zakani, said in an interview with state television that “rioters” had attacked and burned mosques, hospitals, banks, headquarters of security forces, ambulances and fire fighting equipment.

“We were going to put down fires, and they were attacking our fire vehicles and trucks,” Zakani said. “They wanted to create chaos in the city and project a false perception to our enemies.”

Two videos reviewed by the Times showed what appeared to be dozens of bodies shrouded in black sheets or bags at a forensic clinic in the Kahrizak district south of Tehran. Relatives could be heard wailing in the videos as they identified the bodies of loved ones. It was unclear from the videos if the casualties resulted from violence at the protests in Tehran on Friday night.

On Saturday night, two residents of Tehran said many neighborhoods had power cuts and the lights in highways and major roads were turned off. The residents, who did not want their names published out of fear of retribution, said that machine gun-wielding Revolutionary Guard officers and paramilitary members holding handguns were roaming the streets in large numbers, stopping cars and passersby.