Iran's killing of protesters reached level rarely seen, emergent count shows

Iran’s sweeping crackdown on anti-government demonstrations left more than 6,800 people dead, the vast majority of them protesters killed last month, according to an advocacy organization tracking and confirming the fatalities. The level of violence against protesters has few recent parallels, human rights groups say.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based advocacy organization for rights in Iran, says the figure is expected to climb, with more than 11,000 cases under investigation as of Tuesday as researchers seek to gather and cross-check reports from family members of the dead, data from hospitals and other evidence. That task is made more difficult by the government-imposed internet blackout at the height of the crackdown, which slowed the travel of information within Iran and to the rest of the world.

Although The Washington Post has not independently verified the death toll, videos that have surfaced from the protests show evidence of widespread violence, as do accounts from the ground.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/02/03/iran-protests-deaths-crackdown/