Shot, blinded, silenced: Doctors describe Iran's protest crackdown in overrun hospitals

Shayan Asadi* was fleeing the authorities in Tehran near Kaj Square in Saadat Abad district on 8 January after taking part in protests that had engulfed the country for the past three weeks. Her friend Askhan Abdi was running a few steps behind her.

She suddenly heard gunfire, shot after shot ringing out. When she looked back, she saw her friend lying on the ground. She and another friend lifted him into their car and drove to the nearest Atieh Hospital, about a 10-minute drive away.

"His leg was riddled with pellet wounds," she told The New Arab.

Inside, the clinic was in chaos. Blood covered the floor, many of the injured had wounds to their heads and chests, and nurses ran back and forth with no one able to respond to them.

"I stopped one of the nurses and said, 'Please, my friend is not well.' She glanced at Ashkan's leg and said, 'He's been hit by pellets. We can't do anything for him here right now. We have too many critically injured patients, and all the rooms are full.'"

The nurse asked them to take him home and find a private doctor to remove the pellets.

Doctors say hospitals across Iran are overwhelmed with dead and injured protesters as anti-government demonstrations, sparked by economic grievances in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, have spread to more than 100 cities. They have reported thousands of young people shot in the head, chest, or eyes, with morgues at capacity and emergency services stretched beyond their limits.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, publicly acknowledged for the first time that thousands of people were killed during the protests that began on 28 December 2025, which started over economic grievances but evolved into broader calls for the end of his rule. 

"The images and videos circulating in the media and on social networks may not even represent one percent of what actually happened in the streets," Amin Moradi, a physician who was at al-Ghadir Hospital in Tehran during the height of the protests, told The New Arab. 

Chaos in the streets and hospitals

The protests escalated sharply over the first week. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, people took to the streets, chanting slogans, and security forces responded with pellet shotguns, inflicting injuries to the back, head, hands, and sides, wounds meant to intimidate rather than kill, according to Amin. By Thursday, the situation had "shifted dramatically."

"After dark, law enforcement deployed lethal force, and a sudden, coordinated blackout of internet and phone networks left residents isolated, unable to call for help or communicate, as the streets descended into chaos," he said.

In Naziabad, he added that the situation had reached "a level of horror rarely seen." Military-grade weapons were striking civilians, and his small hospital admitted 24 critically injured patients to the ICU in a single night.

"By morning, all 24 had died. After sunrise, trucks arrived to collect the bodies from the morgue."

An Iranian official speaking on the condition of anonymity told Reuters that at least 5,000 people have been killed in the protests, with some of the heaviest casualties reported in Kurdish regions in north-west Iran. 

Meanwhile, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) had reported 3,308 confirmed deaths, with another 4,382 cases under review, and confirmed more than 24,000 arrests.

The death toll also includes roughly 500 security personnel, making it one of the deadliest rounds of unrest in Iran in decades. Other estimates put the number anywhere between 12,000 and 20,000 killed.

"In a hospital that would normally perform maybe two emergency surgeries a day, between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. on Thursday night alone, around 18 surgeries were performed, almost all on patients with severe head injuries," Amin told The New Arab. 

'I cry all the way home'

Nahid S.*, a nurse with 18 years of experience in Iranian hospitals, highlighted a particularly brutal aspect of the crackdown: injuries to protesters' eyes. Pellet gunfire has made eye trauma one of the most common reasons people seek medical attention. 

At Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, she observed a relentless influx of patients. Doctors often provided immediate treatment but left the pellets in place to speed discharges and make room for more patients.

"They were told to come back the following week for eye check-ups and possible pellet removal. This decision wasn't due to negligence; it was because of the overwhelming number of wounded," she said.

Medical staff faced crushing conditions, with shifts and rest hours effectively erased. 

"Almost every day, several wounded people die. Even during our sleeping hours, we go back to the emergency ward to help our colleagues," she said. "When my shift ends, I cry all the way home."

The unrest has coincided with a near-total internet blackout, severely restricting the flow of information and making independent verification of casualties and arrests difficult. 

Mostafa Zarini, a political analyst, described the coordinated repression in Iran as a deliberate strategy. He said the combination of communications blackouts, lethal force, and pressure on medical facilities reflects a "classic pattern of 'concealment after violence.'"

Cutting the internet, Mostafa explained, is about controlling the narrative, preventing images from being recorded, obstructing families from coordinating, and limiting legal documentation.

Iranian authorities have maintained that the protests constitute violent acts supported by foreign actors and have warned of legal action against demonstrators. 

"In such conditions, hospitals become a second arena of repression, where the injured fear being identified," he said.

"Targeting people's eyes with pellet guns instils lasting fear and leaves a permanent mark on the protester's body, a form of symbolic punishment."

Systematic repression

International attention has focused on the scale of the crackdown.

European leaders and the UN have condemned the use of force against peaceful demonstrators, while the Iranian government, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has remained defiant, emphasising the regime's determination to suppress what it calls "destructive elements."

Human rights activist Sanaz Jalali* recounted the harrowing experience of trying to reach her brother Soroush after he was injured in the protests.

On the way to the hospital, she prayed for his survival, knowing he had just finished his military service and they had barely seen each other.

When she arrived, the hospital was so crowded that she had to search bed by bed. Instead of finding Soroush, she located his friend and learned that her brother was in the operating room.

A bullet had struck his spinal cord, punctured his lung, and exited through the front of his body, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.

"He was paralysed just for shouting a few slogans," she told The New Arab, noting that the protests had been entirely peaceful and that her brother had no weapon to defend himself.

Sholeh Zamini, a human rights activist, said the scale of the violence was evident in the hospitals, where the number of wounded had completely overwhelmed the medical system. 

"During those two nights, crimes against humanity were committed," she said.

According to Sholeh, the government has indicated that disruptions could continue until the Iranian New Year, just before the UN Human Rights Council reviews Iran's human rights record, including reports from the UN Special Rapporteur and the independent fact-finding mission established after the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

"It is a way of buying time, hoping that the massacre of protesters will fade from memory," she said.

*Names changed/full names not used to protect their identity 

Saeedeh Fathi is a journalist with over two decades of experience writing on Iran

Follow her on X: @fathi_saeede

This article is published in collaboration with Egab