Rights group names 4,219 killed in Iran protests, a tenth of figures cited before US-Israeli war

Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) has published the names of 4,219 people killed during Iran’s December 2025–January 2026 protests. The report documents details of the crackdown in which state forces fired live ammunition into crowds, reportedly shot people from behind as they fled and killed bystanders who were taking no part in the demonstrations.

Titled The January 2026 Protest Killings in Iran, the report describes the killings as one of the most extensive massacres of protesters in Iran’s contemporary history. IHRNGO says its count is “an absolute minimum”.

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The protests began on 28 December 2025 in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic conditions and spread across the country as anti-government demonstrations. They peaked on 8 and 9 January, when at least 3,356 people were killed across 30 of Iran’s 31 provinces. 91 per cent of the deaths have a known date, and the killings coincided with a nationwide internet blackout.

IHRNGO Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: ” The true scale of the killing of protesters will probably only become clear after the Islamic Republic, through an independent fact-finding process. But even these minimum figures, together with the testimonies and evidence we have gathered, show that on 8 and 9 January the people of Iran faced a planned and coordinated mass-killing of protesters on a scale unprecedented in Iran’s contemporary history.”

Describing the attack on protestors, Amiry-Moghaddam added: “The widespread use of military-grade weapons, shots aimed at vital parts of the body, the use of snipers and the shooting of people as they fled show that the objective was not simply to disperse demonstrations. The available evidence provides serious grounds for examining these killings in the context of crimes against humanity, and those who ordered and carried them out must be held accountable.”

Of the 4,219 dead, 3,791 were men and 420 were women. At least 281 were children, 25 of them under the age of 14. The youngest victim was a four-and-a-half-month-old baby and the oldest was 78. The largest group, 1,373 people, were aged 18 to 29.

IHRNGO identified 138 of the dead as state-affiliated personnel, including police, Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and Basij members. In its conclusions, the group says security forces deployed “military-grade firearms, snipers and live ammunition against unarmed civilians” as part of a coordinated state policy.

The report documents weapons including Kalashnikovs, G3 rifles and Dragunov sniper rifles, and a pattern of shots aimed at the head and chest. It says many victims were not protesting at all.

The dead also include at least 13 Afghan nationals. Among them was a 15-year-old boy in Mashhad who was shot while shopping and had not taken part in the protests. Three dual nationals, holding Swedish, Canadian and German citizenship, and a student living in Italy were also killed.

Iranian authorities put the death toll at 3,117. They classified 2,427 of the dead as “innocent people and guardians of order and security” and 690 as “terrorists and rioters”. IHRNGO found that the list published by the President’s Office left out at least 27 people named on official governorate lists and a further 20 identified in state media. It concluded that the official figure cannot be treated as a ceiling on the death toll.

The report’s documented toll is a fraction of the figures that circulated in the weeks before the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran on 28 February.

Donald Trump said on 20 February that 32,000 people had been killed in the protests, without offering a source for the figure. He repeated it in his State of the Union address on 24 February. According to an investigation by Zeteo, he later raised it, without explanation, to 42,000.

Read: Trump calls for war crimes trial of Iranian leadership over alleged protesters’ deaths

None of these figures has been backed by a published list of names. After eight months of verification, IHRNGO has named 4,219 people, roughly a tenth of the 40,000 figure that circulated widely before the war.

Zeteo’s investigation traced the five-figure claims to Iran International and an Iranian-German surgeon, Amir Parasta. It argued that the claims came to dominate coverage at the expense of more reliable NGO counts and may ultimately undermine accountability for the killings.

IHRNGO stresses that its own count is a minimum, and that the full toll will only be known through an independent fact-finding process.