(BBC): My friends are all like me. We all know someone who was killed in the protests.”
For Parisa, a 29-year-old from Tehran, the crackdown by security forces in Iran earlier this month was unlike anything she had witnessed before.
“In the most widespread previous protests, I didn’t personally know a single person who had been killed,” she said.
Parisa said she knew at least 13 people who had been killed since protests over worsening economic conditions erupted in the capital on 28 December and then evolved into one of the deadliest periods of anti-government unrest in the history of the Islamic Republic.
My friends are all like me. We all know someone who was killed in the protests.”
For Parisa, a 29-year-old from Tehran, the crackdown by security forces in Iran earlier this month was unlike anything she had witnessed before.
“In the most widespread previous protests, I didn’t personally know a single person who had been killed,” she said.
Parisa said she knew at least 13 people who had been killed since protests over worsening economic conditions erupted in the capital on 28 December and then evolved into one of the deadliest periods of anti-government unrest in the history of the Islamic Republic.
With one human rights group reporting that the number of people confirmed killed has passed 6,000, several young Iranians able speak to the BBC in recent days, despite a near-total internet shutdown, have described the personal toll.
Parisa said one 26-year-old woman she knew was killed by “a hail of bullets in the street” when the protests escalated across the country on Thursday, 8 January, and Friday, 9 January, and authorities responded with lethal force to crush them.
She herself took part in protests in the north of Tehran that Thursday, which she insisted were peaceful.
“No-one was violent and no-one clashed with the security forces. But on Friday night they still opened fire on the crowd,” she said.
“The smell of gunpowder and bullets filled the neighbourhoods where clashes were taking place.”
Mehdi, 24, who is also from Tehran, echoed her assessment of the scale of the protests and violence.
“I had never seen anything even close to this level of turnout and such killings and violence by the security forces,” he said.
“Despite the killings on Thursday [8 January] and threats of more killings on Friday, people came out, because many of them could no longer endure it and had nothing left to lose,” he added.
Mehdi described witnessing multiple killings of protesters at close range by security forces.
“I saw a young man killed right in front of my eyes with two live rounds,” he said.
“Motorcyclists shot a young man in the face with a shotgun. He fell on the spot and never got back up.”
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) says it has so far confirmed the killing of at least 6,159 people since the unrest began, including 5,804 protesters, 92 children and 214 people affiliated with the government. It is also investigating 17,000 more reported deaths.
Another group, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), has warned that the final toll could exceed 25,000.
Iranian authorities said last week that more than 3,100 people had been killed, but that the majority were security personnel or bystanders attacked by “rioters”.
Most international news organisations, including the BBC, are barred from reporting inside Iran. But videos showing security forces firing live ammunition at crowds have been verified by the BBC.
Sahar, a 27-year-old from the capital, said she knew seven people who had been killed.
She described how the security forces’ response to the unrest escalated rapidly on 8 January.
During a protest that evening, Sahar and her friends sought refuge in a nearby house after tear gas was fired.
“My friend stuck his head out of a window to see what was going on and they shot him in the neck,” she said.
Another friend was wounded by pellets and later bled to death after avoiding going to hospital out of fear of being detained, according to Sahar.
Sahar said a third friend died while being detained by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC).
“They [officers] told his family to come to the IRGC intelligence office. After a few days they rang and said, ‘Come and collect the body.'”
On 9 January, Sahar said, live ammunition was fired openly and “without mercy” by uniformed security personnel.
“They were pointing lasers at people, and locals were opening their car park doors for us to hide,” she said.
The communications blackout compounded the trauma.
“Right now there’s no news at all,” Sahar said. “Without internet or phone lines we had no idea what was happening to anyone. We could barely get calls through just to get bits of news.”
arham, 27, described widespread use of pellet guns by security forces in Tehran, particularly targeting protesters’ faces and eyes.
One of his friends, Sina, 23, was shot in the forehead and eye on 9 January.
“We took him to a hospital, but the doctor could only give us a prescription and told us to leave as soon as possible,” Parham said.
At an eye hospital, he added, wounded protesters arrived constantly.
“Every 10 minutes, it felt like they were bringing in someone else who had been hit by a pellet.”
A worker at the hospital’s cafe said she had seen “70 people with eye injuries come in during a single shift”, according to Parham.
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