A two-day crackdown that new reporting says killed as many as 36,500 Iranians — a death toll placing it among the deadliest short-term mass killings documented in modern history — followed an order by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to mercilessly crush nationwide protests “by any means necessary,” including accounts of wounded civilians executed inside hospitals, living victims stuffed in body bags, and a surgeon who described the scenes as a “nightmare” unlike anything he had seen.
A wave of major investigations published Sunday provides the clearest account yet of how the Islamic Republic responded after protests that began on December 28, initially sparked by merchant strikes in Tehran before spreading nationwide amid economic collapse and political repression.
Among the most chilling new revelations, The Media Line reports that Iranian security forces shoved wounded protesters — still alive — into body bags, transported them to forensic facilities, and executed those who showed signs of life.
The outlet cited testimony from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, which documented the case of a young protester who survived by pretending to be dead inside a body bag, hearing gunshots as security forces executed wounded civilians who moved or moaned. The survivor remained motionless for three days, escaping only after families stormed the facility in search of loved ones.
A forensic medicine specialist in Tehran told the outlet that wounded protesters were piled atop one another in hospital corridors, transferred alive to morgues, and placed in body bags, describing brutality by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps so severe that many healthcare workers suffered psychological shock. Medical staff reported seeing bodies with oxygen tubes, ECG leads, and catheters still attached — evidence, they said, that patients were removed mid-treatment and left to die or executed.
The Media Line also obtained a message from a nurse who said patients were being systematically executed, including wounded individuals taken directly from operating rooms and shot at close range — testimony the outlet reported was sent shortly before the nurse herself was killed.
According to classified intelligence materials reviewed by Iran International, the regime launched its decisive crackdown on January 8 and 9, deploying IRGC and Basij forces across more than 400 cities and towns, with over 4,000 confrontation sites reported nationwide as live ammunition replaced crowd-control tactics.
The outlet reported that authorities imposed a near-total communications blackout, cutting internet access, mobile networks, and external lines of contact as security forces moved to suppress demonstrations and obscure the scale of the killings.
According to the classified materials, senior commanders were briefed following a January 9 address by Khamenei, after which orders were issued instructing forces to violently suppress the protests, invoking phrases such as “victory through terror” and directing units to eradicate what the regime labeled “sedition” — effectively authorizing unrestricted lethal force against demonstrators.
Initial internal tallies compiled in the days immediately after the crackdown cited at least 12,000 deaths, the outlet reported, referencing an IRGC Intelligence Organization assessment submitted to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and the presidential office on January 11.
Subsequent internal updates sharply escalated those figures. Documents later provided to parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee listed 27,500 killed, Interior Ministry consolidations placed the toll above 30,000, and later IRGC intelligence reports dated January 22 and January 24 cited more than 33,000 and over 36,500 deaths, respectively, according to multiple officials familiar with the data reviewed by the outlet.
Most alarming, Iran International reported evidence of systematic extrajudicial executions, including morgue images showing victims shot in the head while receiving medical treatment, some with breathing tubes, IV lines, and cardiac monitors still attached — details medical professionals said indicate deliberate “finishing shots.”
Doctors and nurses told the outlet that security forces entered hospitals, removed wounded protesters mid-treatment, and in some cases executed patients on site or inside ambulances.
A separate, extensive investigation published Sunday by the New York Times reconstructed how the crackdown unfolded on the ground, after verifying hundreds of videos and interviewing witnesses, medical workers, and families under threat of reprisal.
The Times reported that following Khamenei’s directive to crush the uprising, security forces opened sustained fire from rooftops and police stations, deployed motorcycle units to pursue fleeing crowds, and shot demonstrators — often from behind — across multiple neighborhoods in Tehran and at least 19 cities nationwide.
The investigation described hospitals overwhelmed by gunshot victims, emergency rooms operating under battlefield conditions, and Tehran’s Kahrizak Forensic Center overflowing with bodies, as families were forced to identify loved ones from numbered photographs displayed on screens.
Verified footage reviewed by the Times showed body bags lining hospital entrances, wounded protesters bleeding in the streets, and rows of corpses laid out in morgue courtyards — some still bearing signs of recent hospitalization, including eye injuries, chest wounds, and severe head trauma.
As evidence of how widespread and indiscriminate the violence had become, the Times documented cases in which people were shot simply for being present in the streets, as well as accounts of protesters and bystanders killed while attempting to flee gunfire.
That granular picture of how the killings were carried out was matched by new reporting on the scale of the bloodshed.
TIME magazine, citing two senior officials inside Iran’s Health Ministry, reported that as many as 30,000 people may have been killed in the streets in just 48 hours, overwhelming morgues, exhausting body-bag supplies, and forcing authorities to use tractor-trailers to transport the dead.
TIME reported that hospital-based tallies shared with the publication recorded 30,304 deaths as of January 9, while cautioning that the figure likely excludes victims taken directly to military hospitals or buried outside official channels during the blackout.
Experts consulted by the outlet struggled to find historical parallels, concluding that the only comparable event identified in mass-killing records was the Babyn Yar massacre, when Nazi forces executed 33,000 Jews by gunfire outside Kyiv over two days in September 1941.
Additional testimony emerged from Israel Hayom, which reported that an Iranian citizen from the country’s east managed to contact the outside world despite the blackout and alleged that regime forces used mortar shells in smaller cities — a claim that cannot be independently verified but aligns with accounts of rapidly escalating firepower.
The human toll was further underscored by a first-person account published by The Guardian, in which an anonymous Iranian surgeon described hospitals turning into mass-casualty zones as gunshot victims flooded operating rooms.
“I have worked in disaster zones,” the surgeon wrote. “Nothing compares to the nightmare I saw in Iran’s hospitals when the state started shooting protesters — pools of blood, hundreds of gunshots, no pause, no limits.”
Iran International warned that the true death toll may still rise, citing deliberate body concealment, pressure on families, quiet burials, and disorder in the registration and transfer of corpses — adding that the full scale of the massacre may never be known.
Despite the scale of the killings, Iranian officials — led by Khamenei — have publicly acknowledged only 3,117 deaths, blaming foreign “terrorist cells” and accusing the United States and Israel of fomenting unrest.
The revelations come as pressure on Tehran intensifies. Last week, President Trump called for “new leadership” in Iran, while Iranian officials warned that any move against the supreme leader would trigger “all-out war.”
On Friday, Trump said a U.S. “armada” was moving toward the region “just in case,” as military assets repositioned and economic sanctions expanded against regime-linked financial networks.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
