Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered Iran's Supreme National Security Council to suppress the protests on January 9 by using "any means necessary," The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing two officials familiar with the matter.
According to the officials, security forces were then deployed to the streets with "shoot to kill" orders and told to show protesters no mercy.
“This is not merely a violent protest crackdown. It is a state-orchestrated massacre,” the Times quoted Raha Bahreini, a lawyer and an Iran researcher at Amnesty International, as saying.
Despite the internet shutdown currently keeping the full extent of the violence in the dark, the Times managed to verify footage from early January of regime security personnel opening fire on protesters in at least 19 different Iranian cities and six different Tehran neighborhoods.
Shot in the back, beaten in the streets, overflowing morgues
Two dozen Iranians who participated in protests across multiple cities, as well as the family members of those killed, were also interviewed by the Times under the condition of anonymity "for fear of retribution."
The cousin of Nasim Pouraghayee, 45, who was killed on January 8 in the Sadeghiyeh neighborhood of Tehran, told the Times of how Pouraghayee had been shot in the neck in her husband, Ali's, arms.
"She fell to the ground and began vomiting blood," the cousin described to the paper.
According to the cousin, Ali had called for help but received no response from the fleeing crowd. Ali eventually picked up Pouraghayee's cooling body himself and walked for over an hour to reach their car before driving her to the hospital, where she was officially pronounced dead.
A 50-year-old designer spoke with the Times about her own account in central Tehran, where she and her husband encountered the Basij, a paramilitary volunteer force loyal to Khamenei. Her husband was shot in the lower back, she told the outlet, and a Basij member had threatened to kill her, "but had run out of bullets," allowing her to survive.
The Times also spoke with a 40-year-old shopkeeper who took part in the protests in Tehran Pars, a middle-class neighborhood of Tehran, and watched two young men get shot in the back.
Footage verified by the Times corroborates the account, showing what appears to be security forces firing at protesters from the rooftop of a police station in Tehran Pars, as shouts of "Death to Khamenei” are heard in the background.
Other footage seen and verified by the Times shows tear gas canisters being thrown into the crowd, security forces beating demonstrators with batons, and bodies of those killed lying strewn about in the street.
A nurse working out of Nikan Hospital in Tehran likened the hospital to a war zone, according to the Times, while a doctor at Shohada Tajrish Hospital explained that between January 9 and 10, the hospital received approximately 70 protesters suffering from gunshot wounds an hour.
A team of doctors had reportedly set up an "ad hoc triage unit" outside of Mashhad in northeast Iran to treat protesters afraid to go to hospitals, and other medical personnel report that the number of injured in hospitals across Iran is in the hundreds.
“What I witnessed will forever haunt me,” a doctor in Isfahan told the Times in a text message. “I feel guilty that I’m alive.”
According to the Times, the main morgue of Tehran, Kahrizak Forensic Center, was quickly overwhelmed with the dead.
Families were reportedly brought into a hall where a television showed the faces of the dead, each marked with a number, and told to speak out if they recognized anyone.
“It’s a line. A line of people, so they can pick up their deceased,” a person filming a video showing nearly 300 bodies laid out on sidewalks outside the morgue, said, per the Times. “The young people. The apple of their eyes.”
Over 36,500 estimated to have been killed in protests
While the true number of the dead in the protests is unknown, a US-based Iranian rights group, HRANA, confirmed 5,459 deaths as of Saturday and was investigating more than 17,000 additional cases.
On Sunday, Iran International estimated that at least 36,500 Iranians have been killed by the regime since the beginning of the protests, citing new documentation and eyewitness accounts from medical staff, families of the deceased, and others.
The Daily Mail, citing Iranian-German Professor Amir-Mobarez Parasta, produced a similar estimate, stating that the death toll may be sitting at over 33,000, with 97,645 people wounded.
Both Iranian International and Parasta noted that the regime has reportedly started carrying out executions across the country.
Several of the dead were reportedly shot in the head after being admitted to the hospital for medical treatment, per images released from local morgues and seen by Iran International.
A group of medical personnel confirmed to Iran International that “lethal shots were fired at the injured.”
“According to Israeli officials, the night of January 8 on the streets of Iran was the deadliest in the history of the Islamic Republic—and among the deadliest worldwide in a generation,” N12 News reporter Amit Segal posted to X/Twitter on Sunday morning.
“The regime murdered thousands, possibly tens of thousands,” he wrote. “A massacre on an almost unimaginable scale.”
Jacob Laznik contributed to this report.