The findings of an extensive investigation conducted by The Guardian recount the catastrophic dimensions of the bloody crackdown on Iran’s nationwide and national uprising in January 2026. The report, presenting horrific evidence of mass killings, the collapse of the healthcare system, and mass graves, shows how the Iranian regime, under the cover of a complete internet shutdown, turned Iran into a killing ground over the course of two days.
According to The Guardian’s report, the wave of violence sharply escalated starting on Thursday, January 8, reaching dimensions unprecedented in Iran and possibly in contemporary world history.
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Fear of hospitals and clandestine treatment
On that day, the mobile phone of a doctor in a not-so-large Iranian city, identified in the report under the pseudonym “Dr. Ahmadi,” was ringing constantly.
Throughout the week, protesters injured by batons and pellet weapons were taken to hospitals by police forces, but medical staff believed that many wounded young people avoided going to hospitals because they feared that being registered as trauma patients would lead to their identification and arrest.
In response to this situation, Dr. Ahmadi and his spouse secretly began treating the wounded at a location outside the official state hospital system; through an informal local network, injured young people were directed to them.
The sudden change in the nature of injuries
At first, most injuries were superficial, wounds that required stitches and antibiotics. However, as the hours of Thursday evening, January 8, passed, the number of people seeking treatment steadily increased.
According to The Guardian, the next day everything suddenly changed. Protesters kept coming, but this time their injuries were far more severe: gunshot wounds from close range and deep injuries caused by bladed weapons, often targeting the chest, eyes, and genitals.
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Unofficial death toll and doctors’ estimates
Dr. Ahmadi told The Guardian that he was shocked by the number of those killed, noting that in that small city alone, more than forty people had lost their lives.
Due to the complete internet shutdown, no one had a picture of the overall situation across the country.
To map the national scale of this violence, Dr. Ahmadi formed a network consisting of more than eighty doctors and medical staff across twelve of Iran’s thirty-one provinces.
This network shared its observations and data to obtain a more accurate picture of the scale of the killings.
The assessments by these doctors, shared with The Guardian and supplemented by accounts from morgues and cemeteries across Iran, show that all official and public figures are “severely below the reality.”
These doctors have refrained from giving a definitive figure, but they believe that the deaths officially recorded likely account for less than 10% of the real toll. By comparing the number of killings, they personally witnessed with typical hospital statistics, they estimate that the true number of those killed may exceed 30,000 people.
Concealment and the disappearance of bodies
The Guardian’s report also points to organized efforts to conceal the true scale of the casualties.
Accounts from morgues, cemeteries, and hospitals across Iran describe bodies being transported in food delivery trucks and meat transport vehicles, the rushed burial of corpses, and the disappearance of hundreds of bodies from the country’s forensic medicine system.
At one morgue, staff said that several trucks filled with bodies arrived, a volume far beyond the storage and refrigeration capacity of that facility.
When staff objected that it was impossible to handle that many bodies, two trucks carrying corpses were transferred to another location.
Videos and eyewitness testimony of mass burials
Verified videos from the Kahrizak forensic medicine center in Tehran, reviewed by The Guardian, show similar scenes, including what appear to be hundreds of bodies placed outside the facility and families searching among them for their loved ones.
The Guardian also spoke with three independent witnesses who reported mass burials and the accumulation of hundreds of bodies at Behesht-e Sakineh cemetery in the city of Karaj, about fifty kilometers west of Tehran.
In a written account shared with The Guardian, a person using the pseudonym Reza said that on January 10 and January 11, hundreds of bodies described as “unidentified and unclaimed” were transferred to this cemetery.
According to him, many of the bodies were transported in pickup trucks usually used to carry fruits and vegetables, and not all of them were placed in proper body bags.
The digital iron curtain and internet shutdown
The report emphasizes that the widespread internet shutdown played a key role in keeping the true scale of the massacre hidden.
Images of bodies have only leaked out through illegal satellite communications, while families have been left unable to learn the fate of their loved ones, as hospitals and forensic medicine centers have collapsed under the unprecedented volume of victims.
