Our story
What happened from the first strike at the Tehran bazaar to today, told through the key moments on our timeline. Every fact links to its source, and every number is live.
These are documented records, not final death tolls. They change as we verify more names.
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28 dicembre 2025
It starts at the Tehran bazaar
Protests began in the Tehran bazaars. Shopkeepers closed their shops as the rial fell and prices rose. The economic protest soon became a wider political one.
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29 dicembre 2025
The government says the protesters should be heard
Masoud Pezeshkian said in public that the protesters’ demands should be heard. As the protests spread, that tone sat further from the security response that followed.
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31 dicembre 2025 – 3 gennaio 2026
The first reports of killings
Rights reports described gunfire, the killing of protesters and bystanders, and mass arrests. By 3 January, Amnesty International had examined at least 28 deaths in 13 cities and eight provinces.
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3 gennaio 2026
Malekshahi
Witnesses in Malekshahi, Ilam, said forces at a Basij base fired on protesters. Videos examined afterwards recorded gunfire and people running.
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4 gennaio 2026
The hospital in Ilam
Amnesty International reported that security forces entered the grounds of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ilam, with accounts of pellet fire, tear gas, and assaults on patients, relatives and staff.
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8 gennaio 2026
The peak, and the blackout
Protests across the country reached their peak. The same day, Iran’s connection to the global internet was almost entirely cut. Much of what happened that night only came out later, by routes other than the internet of that hour.
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8 gennaio 2026
Gunfire during the blackout
Later investigations by rights groups and the UN fact-finding mission described widespread lethal force. Human Rights Watch examined testimony and videos from Tehran that showed direct fire.
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9 gennaio 2026
The second night
The protests continued. Evidence that later left Iran described a very high number of people killed and injured in Tehran, Mashhad, Karaj, Isfahan, Rasht and other cities. This page does not treat that as a final toll.
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10 gennaio 2026
Kahrizak
Videos from the Kahrizak forensic centre were published. After examining the images, Amnesty International counted at least 205 distinct body bags at the site. Other images showed families looking for their dead.
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17 gennaio 2026
“Thousands”, then an official figure
Ali Khamenei said in a public speech that thousands had been killed. Days later the Supreme National Security Council announced an official figure of 3,117 dead. Independent sources published different figures, some much higher. Those numbers are not averaged here.
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23 gennaio 2026
The fact-finding mission
The UN Human Rights Council renewed the independent fact-finding mission on Iran and widened its look at the recent violations.
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marzo–agosto 2026
Executions
In its September report the UN fact-finding mission said at least 29 men had been executed between March and August 2026 in connection with the protests, and that dozens more were at risk of execution.
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17 settembre 2026
What the fact-finding mission concluded
The mission said government forces killed people in all 31 provinces, and that the 2025–2026 crackdown was an unprecedented escalation in the scale of violence. It concluded that many of the violations, as part of a widespread attack on civilians, amount to crimes against humanity. It did not publish a final death toll.
