On January 8, while the Iranians rose up, the regime cut off the Internet and plunged the country into silence. In the streets, repression turns to massacre. Ali, a survivor, gives a rare testimony for Reporter+, at the heart of this massacred revolt.

Published on: 06/02/2026 - 19:53

On the evening of Thursday, January 8, as images of the Iranian protests began to circulate around the world, the Internet suddenly shut down around 5 p.m. In just a few minutes, nearly 90 million Iranians were plunged into total isolation.

On social networks, time seems to stand still. The latest videos broadcast show jubilant crowds, thousands of demonstrators chanting "Death to the dictator", calling for the return of the son of the former Shah, marching without interruption on the main boulevards of Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad, Abadan, Ahvaz... But on the spot, in Iran, the demonstrations descend into a bloodbath.

The protesters are suddenly targeted by the security forces. "The atmosphere was incredible and strange. The street was in the hands of the people. Then in the blink of an eye, I heard nothing other than the Kalashnikovs" testifies Ali, survivor of what will remain as one of the worst massacres perpetrated by the Iranian authorities, the number of victims of which would amount to nearly 30,000 dead, according to senior officials of the Iranian Ministry of Health cited by the American media Time.

This trader, whose first name we have changed for security reasons, participated in the uprising at the end of December. On the night of Thursday January 8, Ali was in the streets of Karaj, a suburb of Tehran, when the repression broke out.

He agreed to tell France 24 what he saw, during an interview on January 27, providing direct testimony of the mass killing carried out by the Iranian authorities.

Be careful, this report may offend the public.

See alsoExclusive: Iran, the massacred revolt

"There was no warning, no shooting in the air. Nothing. Suddenly, they opened fire on people," he recalls while he was in one of the main squares of Karaj. "When I heard the sound of the Kalashnikov, I saw people falling one by one and blood spilling on the ground. It was impossible to understand where the bullets were coming from, from what direction. They fired so much that they used up their ammunition."

A few moments before, the street was packed with people: families with children, elderly people, groups of young people gathering.

“After ten to fifteen seconds of continuous shooting, the bursts stopped,” Ali explains. "People were completely shocked. Confused. They didn't know what to do. No one had ever seen a dead body before, or so much blood. Everywhere you looked, someone was on the ground, blood was splattered on their clothes, women and children were screaming. I was scared. I was crying. I was screaming."

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“I don’t know how we managed to come to our senses”

"When you see someone whose head has exploded after being hit by a bullet, the first ten seconds you are completely shocked, you are afraid. You have absolutely no idea what to do. I don't know how we managed to come to our senses. Wherever people had been able to hide or take shelter, they came out. We all started grabbing the hands and feet of those who had been shot to take them to the hospital."

Ali then thinks he has seen the worst. But he is wrong. At the hospital, "the emergency room floor was so covered in blood that when you ran and put your feet on the ground, it made a splashing sound. Blood was splattering everywhere." A continuous stream of wounded arrives. Those accompanying them are covered in blood, panicked and haggard. The caregivers, overwhelmed, no longer know what to do.

The hospital itself has become a trap. "In front of the door, officers were throwing tear gas. I really don't know where they came from suddenly. They landed like locusts, I couldn't see them."

Also read “They were bullets of war”: Iranian doctors testify to unprecedented repression

Ali and his friends carry one of their own, shot in the leg. He was able to apply a tourniquet with his belt, but then realized that his friend had also been shot in the chest. "The nurses were saying, 'Sir, he's dead. Take him away! Don't leave him here!'" Ali recalls, still in shock. He later understands that they were trying to warn him: agents were going to come and collect the body.

Cell phones no longer work, communications are cut off by the authorities, only landlines work. After many efforts, Ali managed to notify his friend's parents, so that they could recover the body in a nearby street, out of sight.

“If someone fell (…) they would finish them off”

To get home, Ali and his friends walk across town. "We saw what the apocalypse meant. On the ground, you saw nothing but blood. Nothing but blood and shell casings."

In the alleys, they still witness clashes. “The special forces were out. This time on motorbikes, they were accelerating and shooting.”

On major roads, tear gas is fired in massive quantities. “Everywhere you looked, someone on the side of the street was vomiting, this tear gas was unbearable, I had never seen anything like it.”

The next day, Friday January 9, Ali returned to demonstrate elsewhere in Karaj. While even more violent clashes took place, he still came out alive, despite some injuries. "The city had become a battlefield, like a front line. We only heard the gusts. Nothing else."

"It was worse than the day before (…) Wherever you looked, someone had been shot or a body was lying on the side of the street (…) If someone fell, if someone was injured, they didn't take them away. They finished them off. It didn't matter if it was a man, a woman, an old person or a young person. They fired in a linear fashion."

“The blood had flowed so much that the ground was drowned,” Ali said. “They brought fire trucks to clean up the traces in the street. That is to say that with a simple water hose, the blood did not go away.”

“Refrigerated trucks full of corpses”

Deprived of communications, Ali gradually learns of the deaths of several loved ones. The sister of a friend lost her life on January 8 in Karaj and other acquaintances were killed.

A member of his family was also shot dead in a neighborhood in northern Tehran. Ali accompanies his family in search of his body at the Kahrizak Forensic Institute, the largest morgue in Tehran. “There, I understood that everything we had seen so far was nothing,” Ali describes.

“The ground was covered with body bags, corpses lying there (…) On the ground, black covers. Inside, lots of bodies.” Ali and his loved ones search, opening the locks one by one, looking for their loved one. "There were so many bodies there that you can't imagine. The further we went, the more there were. It seemed endless. Refrigerated trucks usually used for transporting meat would arrive full of corpses. They would unload them and leave. Agents, who had absolutely no honor or humanity, would handle and unload these bags of corpses without any respect."

Also read: Iran: hospitals and morgues overflow after deadly demonstrations against the regime

“I saw things… I am traumatized for the rest of my life,” assures Ali, after having lived through the bloodiest days his country has known since the 1979 Revolution. “How many people must die here?” he repeats.

"Nowhere in the world will you find people begging a foreign country to attack them. But now the Iranian people are counting the days. They are begging Trump or Netanyahu to attack. Nowhere in the world will you see such a thing except in Iran. Now people can't go out, they don't have the strength because if they go out, there will be bullets in response. As soon as they hit their bases, be sure that people will come out, but by then, people no longer have the strength. They no longer have the strength to stand in front of the bullets.

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