Video of body bags at one Iranian morgue shows scale of Iran crackdown

Amid the crowd’s wailing, a man in a yellow sweater clings to the feet of a corpse, swaying gently, crying and moaning inaudibly. Nearby, a woman can be heard screaming, a guttural sound that is unmistakably reminiscent of the discovery of the death of a loved one.

The video, filmed near the Iranian capital Tehran, shows crowds of men dressed in black winter coats walking and searching for information, some urgently speaking into their cellphones. Three women wearing headscarves are engaged in a heated argument that turns physical, one of them being held by the other two as their grief turns to anger. A fourth woman sits slumped against a wall, muttering while banging her head indifferently.

NBC News geolocated the video to the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Center, where rows of black body bags can be seen lying inside and outside of a large warehouse. Many were partially opened to allow identification of the corpses. Bloody limbs and faces, mainly of men, are visible.

The video does not appear to have circulated until Sunday, but NBC News was unable to determine exactly when it was taken.

Although the Iranian regime has shut down the Internet in the country, this vignette showing the consequences of its deadly crackdown on protesters was posted online on Sunday.

The images do not clearly show how these people died. But according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, or HRANA, a U.S.-based watchdog, nearly 600 people were killed in protests that erupted just over two weeks ago in response to soaring prices for everyday consumer goods. Among them, 496 were identified as demonstrators and 48 as members of the security forces, HRANA said.

Another human rights monitor, the Norway-based Iranian Human Rights Organization, said Monday that at least 694 protesters had been killed. The number of victims varies among rights groups, as the internet outage makes it difficult to communicate with people in the country.

Iranian authorities have not released any official data, although state-controlled TV channel IRIB claimed, without evidence, that the “majority” of the deaths were caused by the anti-government protesters themselves.

With the Internet shut down by the Islamic regime, it is difficult to have a clear picture of the situation. But details are coming in and the government has found that clips were sent via Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service. Starlink terminals are known to have been smuggled into Iran during the last major round of protests in 2022 and 2023.

London-based doctor Shahram Kordasti said he had been in contact with colleagues in Iran. In recent days, he said, Iranian doctors have seen hundreds of dead and injured flood into Tehran’s hospitals, as security forces maintain a constant presence.

“It’s basically a massive number of deaths and injuries,” he told NBC News in a telephone interview. Kordasti, who is a hemato-oncologist, meaning one who treats people with blood-related disorders and cancers, also criticized a “lack of supply and support at the hospital” and a “lack of communication.”

“One of my colleagues on his way to the hospital was shot and injured,” he said, adding that the doctors he had been in contact with were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from what they had seen “and they couldn’t even speak properly.”

Some feel they cannot even seek treatment for fear of arrest by the regime’s security forces, according to Kayvan Mirhadi, chief of internal medicine at Clifton Springs Hospital near Rochester, New York.

For years, he has offered online medical advice to Iranian protesters among his 1.3 million Instagram followers. Early in the protests, they came to him for advice on how to treat tear gas inhalation, blunt force trauma and gunshot wounds, he said in a telephone interview, but that changed Thursday when the internet went down.

“Rather than people asking for advice on treating injuries, you just hear people telling you they saw protesters get killed,” Mirhadi said. “That changed after that internet shutdown. The level of violence increased.”

He added that he believed more than 1,000 people had been killed in Tehran since Thursday, based on information he had received. He also heard worrying messages from colleagues in Tehran and Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, he added.

“They were saying 20 deaths had just come in, all of them were headshots. And I was like, ‘What’s happening? These are protests. Why are they doing headshots?'” Mirhadi said.

“Everyone was saying that now that they are using real weapons, there are no more pellets,” he added. “These are bullets from rifles, from pistols, from handguns, from shotguns. And people are dying on the spot.”