Amman Today
publish date 2026-02-08 20:54:00
On the evening of Thursday, January 8, Iran resorted to cutting off the Internet, after images of the protests began to spread around the world. At about five o’clock in the afternoon, the network was suddenly cut off, and about 90 million Iranians found themselves, within minutes, in complete isolation from the rest of the world.
On social media platforms, time seemed to have stopped when the last video clips circulated showing joyful crowds. Thousands of demonstrators were chanting “Death to the dictator,” calling for the return of the son of the former Shah.
This still from the video, which was circulated and posted online on January 8, 2026, shows protesters in Tehran chanting “Death to the dictator.” © AFP/Archive
They were roaming without stopping the main streets of Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad, Abadan, Ahvaz and other cities, but on the spot the Iranian demonstrations had begun to turn into a “bloodbath.”
Security forces suddenly began targeting demonstrators. Ali, one of the survivors, narrates what became one of the worst “massacres” committed by the Iranian authorities. The American Times magazine, citing senior officials from the Ministry of Health in the Islamic Republic, estimated the number of victims at about 30,000 dead, saying: “The atmosphere was strange and strange. The street belonged to the people. Then, in the blink of an eye, I could no longer hear anything but the sounds of Kalashnikovs.”
Ali (we have changed his name for security reasons), a merchant, has been participating in these protests since late December. On the night of Thursday, January 8, Ali was in the streets of Karaj, a suburb of the capital, Tehran, when the crackdown began.
Ali agreed to tell FRANCE 24 what he saw. In an interview on January 27, he gave direct testimony about the “mass killings” committed by the Iranian authorities.
Warning: This report may shock some people
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Ali recalls what he experienced in one of the main squares in Karaj: “There was no warning, no warning shots in the air. Nothing. Suddenly, they opened fire on people,” and added: “When I heard the sound of a Kalashnikov, I saw people falling, one after another, and blood spreading on the ground. It was impossible to know from which direction the bullets were coming. They fired so intensely that their ammunition ran out.”
A few moments before that, the street had been crowded with people: families with children, elderly people, groups of young people who had begun to gather.
“After ten to fifteen seconds of shooting, without interruption, the bursts stopped,” Ali explains. He continues: “People were completely shocked, confused, and did not know what to do. No one had ever seen so many corpses and blood. Everywhere you looked, there was someone lying on the ground, blood staining clothes, women and children screaming. As for me, I felt afraid, I was crying, and screaming.”
“I don’t know how we managed to regain our breath.”
“When you see someone whose head was blown off by a bullet, in the first ten seconds you are completely shocked, you feel terrified. You never know what to do. I don’t know how we succeeded in recovering ourselves. People were coming out from everywhere they sought refuge. We all started to provide a helping hand to the injured people to take them to the hospital.”
Ali thought at the time that he had witnessed the worst, but he was wrong. At the hospital, “the emergency floor was so covered in blood that when you ran and put your feet on the floor there was a squeak. There was blood everywhere.” A stream of injured people was constantly arriving at the hospital, and their companions were also covered in blood, terrified, and bewildered. The exhausted medical staff also did not know what to do.
The hospital itself turned into a trap. Ali adds: “In front of the door, security agents fired tear gas. I didn’t know where they came from suddenly. They landed like locusts, I couldn’t see them.”
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Ali and his friends were transporting one of their comrades who was shot in the leg. He managed to put a compression band on him with his belt, but he later realized that his friend had also been shot in the chest. Ali, still in shock, recalls: “The nurses were saying: ‘Sir, he’s dead. Take him! Don’t leave him here!'” Later, Ali realized that they were trying to warn him: security personnel were coming to take the body.
The authorities cut off communications, including mobile phone service, and only landlines remained operational. After many attempts, Ali was able to notify his friend’s parents of what happened to him so that they could retrieve their son’s body in a nearby street, out of sight.
“If one of them falls… finish him off.”
On their way back to their homes, Ali and his friends crossed the city on foot. “We saw what the end of the world means,” he says. “On the ground, you see nothing but blood. Nothing but blood and bullet casings.”
In the alleys, they also witnessed more clashes. Ali narrates: “The special forces came out. This time on motorcycles, they were speeding up and shooting.”
On the main roads, tear gas was being fired extensively. Ali continues his testimony: “Wherever you look, you see someone vomiting on the side of the road. This tear gas was unbearable. I have never seen anything like that.”
Iranians take part in an anti-government demonstration in Tehran, Iran on January 9, 2026. © Associated Press.
The next day, Friday, January 9, Ali protested again in another location in Karaj. The clashes were more violent, but he managed to survive despite some wounds. Ali narrates: “The city turned into a battlefield, like a front line. We could only hear bullets, nothing else.”
“The situation was worse than the day before (…) Everywhere you looked, you would find a person wounded by bullets or a body lying on the side of the road (…) If someone fell, or was injured, they did not move him. Rather, they finished him off. No matter who it was, a man, a woman, an old person or a young person. They were shooting at the same pace.”
Ali continues in his narration to France 24: “Blood flowed so abundantly that it flooded the ground.” He added: “They brought fire trucks to clean every trace in the street. A regular water hose was not enough to get rid of the blood.”
“Refrigerated trucks full of bodies”
Due to the communication breakdown, Ali was gradually receiving news of the death of many of his relatives. His friend’s sister was killed on January 8 in Karaj, as were other people he knew.
A member of his family was shot dead in a neighborhood in northern Tehran. Ali, accompanied by members of his family, went to the Kahrizak Institute of Forensic Medicine, the largest morgue in Tehran, to search for the victim’s body. “There, I realized that everything we had seen up to that moment was nothing,” he says.
Ali continues his story: “The floor was covered with morgue bags (…) on the floor, black bags full of corpses.” Under these circumstances, Ali and his relatives were searching bags one by one, searching for their relative. He says: “There were so many bodies that you cannot imagine. The further we went, the more there were. It seemed endless. The refrigerator trucks that are usually used to transport meat were loaded with bodies. They were working on emptying the trucks of the bodies of the victims before they left again. The security personnel were, without the slightest honor or humanity, transporting the bags loaded with bodies and emptying them without any respect.”
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Our interlocutor, whose face still shows signs of shock, repeats: “I saw things… I am in shock that will remain as long as I live.” “How many people have to die here?” asks Ali, who lived through the bloodiest days in Iranian history since the 1979 revolution.
Ali concludes his testimony about what she experienced during the Iranian protests and what the demonstrators are counting on today, by saying that “nowhere in the world are there people begging a foreign country to attack them. But now, the Iranian people are counting the days. They are begging Trump or Netanyahu to attack. You will not see anything like this anywhere in the world except Iran. Now, people can no longer go out, they do not have the strength, so if they go out, bullets will be the answer. Once their bases are hit (The Iranians, editor’s note) were sure that the people would come out, but waiting for that, they no longer had any strength to confront the bullets.
The original text is in French, translated into Arabic by: Tariq Balqin
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World News
Source 1 : https://www.france24.com/ar/آسيا/20260208-احتجاجات-مظاهرات-ايران-الحرس-الثوري-مراسلون-تحقيق-حصري-خامنئي-ترامب-حقوق-الإنسان
Source 2 : ألدستور
