Hospitals in Iran are reportedly overflowing with casualties as the government intensifies its crackdown on nationwide protests, with medics describing morgues packed with bodies and victims arriving with fatal gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
According to the BBC, the morgue at Poursina Hospital in Rasht city was inundated after at least 70 bodies were brought in overnight. A medical worker at a Tehran hospital told the broadcaster that staff are overwhelmed, treating protesters with "direct shots to the heads" and "to their hearts as well." Many victims reportedly died before reaching medical care.
The bloodshed follows increasingly severe threats from Iranian authorities. On Saturday, Attorney General Mohammad Movahedi Azad warned that protesters and anyone assisting them would be considered an "enemy of God"—a charge that carries the death penalty. State media broadcast a directive calling for "decisive confrontation" and trials "without leniency, compassion, or indulgence."
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reports at least 65 people killed and more than 2,300 arrested in the past two weeks of demonstrations, which began over economic hardship but have evolved into a broad challenge to the clerical regime.
Iran has also imposed a near-total internet and telephone blackout, severely restricting the flow of information out of the country and isolating its 85 million citizens from the outside world. Despite the communication shutdown and lethal repression, protests show no sign of abating, leaving hospitals and morgues struggling to cope with the grim human toll.
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