'My nightmare': Iranians recount crackdown under internet blackout

Blood stained the street after a person dressed in a full chador covering shot at a large crowd that had gathered in the north of Tehran on January 10, during anti-government protests sparked by economic strain that exploded in size and intensity on January 8.

"I heard this pop pop... and I saw with my eyes three people collapsed at the same time," said 44-year-old Kiarash, who spoke to AFP by phone from Germany where he lives, after witnessing violent suppression of protests while visiting his native Iran.

A man nearby shouted as he tried to help his companion, his hand covered in her blood, Kiarash said.

"This is my nightmare right now," he said. "He couldn't understand that she had been shot."

If the shooter had been left-handed, Kiarash said, "I was dead."

He had gone out to protests despite witnessing horrific scenes earlier in the morning at the sprawling mortuary in southern Tehran.

After receiving news that a friend had died after being shot, he went with relatives to the Behesht-e Zahrah cemetery.

They found it flooded with people there to collect and prepare bodies for burial, which in Islam must be done as quickly as possible after death, often within 24 hours.

People pushed into two warehouses stacked with black body bags, sometimes two or three on top of each other, he said. A mother on her own cried for help moving the body of her son.

There were "more than 1,500, up to 2,500 (dead) people in just one warehouse", said the former logistics company employee.

The crowds chanted to honour the dead and against supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who leads the clerical authorities in place since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Security forces did not intervene, but stopped people from recording any images.

Testimonies like Kiarash's are part of the piecemeal picture emerging of what happened in Iran during the protests, after authorities imposed a nationwide internet blackout on January 8.
'People were not scattering'
Norway-based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR) says 3,428 protesters have been verified to have been killed by security forces, but warns the actual toll could be several times higher.

Other estimates place the death toll at more than 5,000 -- and possibly as high as 20,000 -- with the internet blackout severely hampering independent verification, IHR said.

The opposition Iran International channel based outside the country has said at least 12,000 people were killed during the protests, citing senior government and security sources.

Eyewitness accounts received by IHR reported "protesters being shot dead while trying to flee, the use of military-grade weapons and the street execution of wounded protesters".

Kiarash, who had completed compulsory military service in Iran, said he recognised the sound of heavy machine gun fire at protests on January 8 in the northern city of Amol. A friend called his family to ask for blood donations for dozens of wounded -- many of them hit in their feet, he said.

Kaveh, using a pseudonym and speaking to AFP from Britain after leaving Iran, said he also heard gunshots in the streets of Tehran on Friday last week, but did not see shooters himself.

"It wasn't shotgun (fire), it was an assault rifle, automatic bursts of fire... every 10 minutes we heard a row of gunshots," the 33-year-old said.

But "people were not scattering", he added. "They were just staying."

Kaveh had felt a palpable change in Tehran's streets before protests last week -- shops closed and usually packed roads emptied. Then the internet went dark.

People started to gather in the streets, putting up blockades and setting fires in trash bins, Kaveh said.

He sent a text to his wife: "No internet, I'm good, Love u". But the message wasn't delivered.

Videos have filtered out despite the internet blackout showing large demonstrations in which people shouted slogans against Khamenei and for the return of the monarchy ousted by the Islamic revolution, with some showing police cars and mosques on fire.

A video geolocated by AFP to Kermanshah in western Iran was punctuated by the crack of what sound like gunshots.

"Since the start of the protests I saw many bodies in the streets and people being shot," a 39-year-old artist in Tehran said in a message to a friend. "Tehran looked like a war zone."

Mohammad, a 30-year-old Iranian photojournalist in Tehran, said he was "afraid of the possibility of a war or civil war" after "these peaceful protests turned extremely violent".

- Identified 'by his tattoos' -

Saleh Alavizadeh, an Iranian actor and director based in France, said he knew two people who had been killed during the protests.

"A young theatre actor was shot in the head, and because they couldn't recognise him from his face... they had to recognise him by his tattoos," he told AFP.

"Everyone knows at least one person who has been killed," Alavizadeh said of the several people he'd spoken to in Iran in recent days during spurts of connectivity.

Canada said on Thursday that Iranian authorities had killed a Canadian citizen, and France said a French-Iranian woman had been injured in Iran, without providing further details.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said only "hundreds" were killed in what authorities have deemed "riots" and a "terrorist operation" that hijacked peaceful protests over the economy and was fuelled by Tehran's arch-foes the United States and Israel.

State television has been awash with images of large pro-government demonstrations called by authorities, funeral processions for security forces and reports of thousands of arrests.

Billboards have appeared in Tehran with an image of a burnt public bus with the words: "This is not a protest".

Even as government-approved media shares floods of clips online, ordinary Iranians have remained mostly cut off, leaving relatives abroad wracked with worry.

Fearing messages sent by Starlink or landlines could be intercepted or mark them as spies, many Iranians stick to simple messages of reassurance.

Kaveh gave friends with Starlink access several numbers to call. "Just report back if they're good or not," he told them. "We don't go into details."

The government has said it has control of the streets and rights groups say there have been no verifiable reports of protests in recent days.

Some Iranians said they were certain it is only a matter of time before protests flare up again despite -- or as a result of -- the high death toll.

But for Kiarash, one thing was certain as he headed to the airport in Tehran to leave his homeland: for the city and the people, "nothing will be normal again".