The New Yorker:

Under the cover of an internet blackout, Iranian security forces killed hundreds of demonstrators. Only now are details of the carnage starting to emerge.

By Cora Engelbrecht

On a recent January evening, throngs of Iranian protesters filed up wide boulevards spanning the northeastern city of Mashhad. Within hours, the highways and footbridges were packed with people, including young children trailing their mothers and grandparents. Most wore masks and dark clothing. As the crowds thickened, police tried to disperse the swell of people with tear gas. Around 8 p.m., internet service was cut, and, soon after, security forces started shooting into the demonstrations.

Some of the protesters crawled to escape the gunfire. Others bled to death on sidewalks or on the backs of strangers who had tried to carry them to safety. But the government forces kept firing into the crush of demonstrators.

The massacre in Mashhad unfolded on January 8th, after Iranians across the country went out to protest the regime—the culmination of a movement that had convulsed the country for nearly two weeks, following the collapse of the economy. Under the cover of a nationwide internet blackout, security forces used lethal weapons to target demonstrators from rooftops, bridges, and building complexes. Only now, more than a week later, have details corroborating the scope of the carnage begun to emerge. The mass killing continued over the next two nights, according to five Iranians with whom I spoke, who witnessed the violence and who shared videos with me. “For three nights, the streets of my home town turned into a killing field,” one demonstrator, whom I will refer to as M., told me. M. went out each evening to help recover the wounded and the dead. “The death was incomprehensible,” he said. Corpses were piled in parks and hospitals throughout Mashhad. Some of the injured were treated by protesters in alleyways, or by doctors operating from makeshift clinics in their homes.

One pediatrician, who was on duty at a children’s hospital on January 9th, told me that her staff transported more than a hundred and fifty corpses from their emergency ward to one of the city’s main cemeteries, Behesht-e Reza, that night. At least thirty of the dead were under the age of eighteen. “I saw an eight-year-old child who was shot in the chest,” she told me, over the phone. “This regime has no sense of humanity.” Families have been forced to pay fees for their relatives’ remains. Many could not reclaim them unless they signed fake death certificates confirming that their loved ones had been murdered by violent protesters or had died of natural causes.

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