Artist: Behnam Mohammadi
By Kayhan Life Staff
The nationwide anti-regime demonstrations in Iran, since December 28, have led to the deadliest state crackdown since 1979, and the state has shut down internet access since January 8.
Recent reports from inside Iran, from medical networks to high level official sources, reveal a shocking wave of state-led killings on January 8 and 9, 2026. Medical networks estimate 33,000 people died in 48 hours, while Iran International, a London-based outlet, puts the number even higher at 36,500.
These numbers mean that the Islamic Republic’s henchmen killed at least one Iranian every five seconds, showing a level of state violence never seen before.
The scale of these killings in 2 days, is hard to compare to recent events. For example, the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, killed about 1,200 people, but the Islamic Republic security forces and their agents killed about 18 times that number in just one day. It took about 6 months from the beginning of the Gaza war on October 7, 2023, to reach a similar death toll to what happened in Iran in only two days.
Professor Payam Akhavan, a leading figure in human rights and humanitarian justice and a contributor to the Srebrenica genocide indictment, where about 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed in July 1995, described reports of morgues running out of body bags, refrigerator trucks being used as temporary morgues, and bodies being taken to growing mass graves.
He said that what happened was not confusion between fighting armies, but a targeted extermination of unarmed civilians who only wanted a future based on dignity.
