(CNN) — Several people who protested in Iran in recent days have told CNN of enormous crowds as well as brutal violence on the streets of Tehran, with one woman saying she saw “bodies piled up on each other” in a hospital.
A woman in her mid-60s and a 70-year-old man described seeing people of all ages out in the streets of the Iranian capital on Thursday and Friday. On Friday night, however, security forces brandishing military rifles killed “many people,” they said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
The protests, which began on December 28 as demonstrations in Tehran’s bazaars over rampant inflation, have since spread to more than 100 cities, posing the biggest challenge to the Iranian regime in years.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that the United States supports the people of Iran after President Donald Trump reiterated his threat on Friday to attack Iran if security forces killed protesters.
Providing rare insight into the nature of the protests amid an ongoing internet shutdown, demonstrators in a different neighborhood of Tehran told CNN that they helped a man in his mid-60s who had been severely injured in the crackdown. He had around 40 pellets lodged in his legs and had a broken arm, they said.
They tried to get the man medical help at several different hospitals, but said that the situation was “completely chaotic.”
Other protesters told CNN that the number of people out on the streets was incomparable to anything they had ever experienced before, describing the scenes as “unbelievably beautiful and hopeful.”
A televised speech by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Friday night changed this atmosphere. Shortly afterwards, the crackdown turned extremely violent, the protesters said.
“Sadly, we may have to accept the reality that this regime will not step down defeated without external force,” one protester told CNN.
Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni admitted “some shortcomings” but told state television Saturday that a “better economic future” is in store for Iranians.
An Iranian social worker who attended a protest in Tehran on Friday said the situation deteriorated into a “nightmare” when authorities attacked demonstrators.
“Bullets, who knows, tear gas, whatever you can think of, they would fire them,” she said. “And it was very terrifying.”
She said she witnessed a girl being shocked in the neck with an electric device “until she passed out,” and that her co-worker’s son was among several people killed.
Iranian medical personnel and witnesses described other harrowing scenes to pro-reform outlet IranWire.
On Friday in the southern city of Shiraz, medical staff were attending to a woman who was shot in the head.
“I have never seen such scenes in my life,” one of the medical workers is heard saying in a video shared with IranWire. “The shameless people shot (her) in the head and neck. Do you have any idea how many patients we have until now?”
A doctor in the eastern city of Neyshabur said security forces shot at protesters from the top of buildings on Friday. A family of six passing by was shot, as was an elderly woman’s nurse as she was on her way home, the doctor said.
After security forces fired at people in Najafabad on Thursday, the injured were taken to Montazeri hospital, according to a medical source there.
“People rushed to the hospital to take the bodies of their children, and they took their children and buried them in the same clothes,” the medical staff member said. In Iranian Muslim culture, dead bodies are typically washed and then covered in white cotton fabric before burial.
Mohammad Lesanpezeshki, a Chicago doctor educated in Tehran, told CNN that his friends working in Iranian hospitals are overwhelmed as more protesters are injured in the crackdown.
“One person who’s an orthopedic surgeon said that they had multiple bodies in their ED (emergency department), at least 30 people that were shot in their limbs,” said Lesanpezeshki.
His friends also told him that Farabi Eye Hospital in Tehran experienced a particular surge in patients with pellets lodged in their eyes, with roughly 200 to 300 patients.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) estimated Saturday that at least 78 protesters have been killed in the past 14 days in connection with the demonstrations.
The rights advocacy group, focused on Iran, said in a news release that at least 116 have died in the protests in total, including 38 security personnel.
At least seven of the protesters killed were under 18, HRANA said. The group also reported that at least 2,638 people had been arrested.
“Based on aggregated data up to the end of the fourteenth day, 574 protest locations have been identified in 185 cities across all 31 provinces of the country,” the group said. The number of locations is cumulative, beginning when the protests started on December 28.
CNN has reached out to the Iranian Interests Section in Washington and the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.
On Saturday, 100 people were arrested in the county of Baharestan near Tehran for disrupting public order and leading “riots,” a local official told the semi-official news agency Tasnim.
CNN could not independently verify the numbers of those killed or arrested.
Internet blackout backfired, resident says
One resident in Tehran told CNN on Saturday how the blackout has galvanized more people to join the anti-regime protests sweeping the country.
“The internet shutdown appears to have backfired, as boredom and frustration drove even more people into the streets,” said a 47-year-old man from the Iranian capital, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“People of all ages – men, women and children – participate, chanting from windows and gathering in large numbers.”
The resident explained how citizens have been waiting for the cover of darkness to take to the streets in Iran’s larger cities. He described a sense of “unstoppable momentum” as the protests intensify.
While the protests were initially triggered by concerns over inflation, the resident said the price of everyday goods has continued to rise in the wake of the political unrest, with basics such as eggs and milk becoming “significantly more expensive.”
The head of the Iranian Army, Amir Hatami, in a statement shared with state media, urged the Iranian people on Saturday to “remain vigilant” and called for unity and national cohesion to “prevent the enemy from achieving its malicious goals.”
Khamenei has continued to post on social media despite the blackout, using the platform X to brand protesters “a bunch of people bent on destruction” and criticize Trump on Friday.
Doug Madory, an expert who studies internet disruptions, told CNN Saturday that even though the authorities have disabled communications, Iran is “technically connected to the internet.”
“So, if they wanted to turn something back on, they could do that for any person or any particular internet connection,” Madory said.
“We can see a small trickle of traffic coming out. So, there is some. It’s very small, but it’s not zero. It’s probably some high value people who have maintained connectivity.”
CNN’s Laura Sharman, Max Saltman, Jomana Karadsheh and Hira Humayun contributed to this report.
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