Dey 1404 Uprising and Massacre · Khizesh va Koshtar-e Dey 1404

Culture of origin: Iranian · Historical

Holiday sources: Bakhtiari · Gilak · Iran · Lur · Mazandarani · Qashqai · Talysh

The protests began on 28 December 2025 in Tehran's Grand Bazaar over the collapse of the rial and spread across the country, in more than 200 cities, into demonstrations against the Islamic Republic. On the evening of 8 January, as the authorities cut the internet nationwide, state forces fired live ammunition into the crowds, aimed at heads and chests, used snipers and shot people from behind as they fled; the massacre went on through 9 January. Iran Human Rights has verified by name 4,219 people killed, at least 281 of them children and 420 women, and more than 3,000 of them on these two days, in 30 of Iran's 31 provinces; it calls this an absolute minimum. HRANA had documented 7,015 deaths by 5 February, at least 6,508 of them protesters, with 11,744 more cases under review; local health officials put the dead of 8 and 9 January at 30,000 to 36,500, and the International Centre for Human Rights at least 43,000. The government admitted 3,117 deaths, a list Iran Human Rights found incomplete. The killing reached the towns of the Zagros early. In Azna, Lorestan, security forces fired on protesters on the evening of 1 January, a Revolutionary Guards agent among them on a video Amnesty International verified, killing at least six, 15-year-old Mostafa Falahi among them. In Malekshahi, a mostly Feyli Kurdish town in Ilam, the Guards fired from a Basij base on 3 January, killing at least five, among them Latif Karimi, a retired brigadier-general whose son said he had asked the forces not to shoot; the next day police special forces and the Guards stormed Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ilam, firing pellets and tear gas and beating patients and staff. In Lordegan, whose people are Bakhtiari, Hengaw counted nine shot dead by 7 January, seven of them that evening. On the night of 8 January in Khorramabad the Guards and Basij fired from the rooftops of mosques and government buildings; one hospital received 43 bodies that night, and residents estimate 300 to 400 killed on two streets. In Izeh a resident reported at least five killed that evening, a 15-year-old girl among them. In Rasht on the night of 8 January the Grand Bazaar burned while government forces kept fire crews out and shot people fleeing the flames toward Shariati Street; HRANA counted at least 392 dead in the city over the two days and witnesses quoted by Iran International as many as 3,000, and by 26 January Hengaw had confirmed by name at least 90 Gilaks killed, 14 of them women and two children. In Mazandaran the dead whom Hengaw confirmed by name included 17-year-old Abolfazl Azizi in Sari; Reza Karimi-Far, 56, a retired teacher shot four times in the chest in Chalus as he tried to help a wounded girl; and 12-year-old Samira Khani, shot by government forces outside the Criminal Investigation Department building in Ramsar. More than 53,000 people were arrested, and by September 2026 at least 29 had been executed in connection with the protests. Iran Human Rights says the evidence warrants investigating the killings as crimes against humanity. In Talesh, Hengaw named two Talysh men, Matin Khosravi and Mahmoud Farajnia, shot dead in the protests there on the night of January 9, 2026.