In brief
Hundreds of graphic images have surfaced depicting the faces of 326 victims killed in Iran's crackdown on anti-government protests. The leaked photos, primarily from the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Centre, show the bloodied and disfigured features of those deceased, including 18 women, many of whom were labeled as unidentified. The images, which families use to identify their loved ones, coincide with reports of at least 4,000 deaths linked to the protests. The violent government response has increasingly alarmed human rights organizations amid a near-total internet blackout in Iran.
Warning: this story contains graphic content which some readers might find distressingHundreds of photos revealing the faces of those killed during Iran's violent crackdown on anti-government protests have been leaked to BBC Verify. The pictures, which are too graphic to show without blurring, reveal the bloodied, swollen and bruised faces of at least 326 victims - including 18 women. The images, displayed in a south Tehran mortuary, are one of the only ways families have been able to identify their dead loved ones.Many of the victims were too disfigured to be identified, and 69 people had been labelled in Persian as John or Jane Doe, suggesting their identity was unknown when the photo was taken. Only 28 of the victims had labels with clearly visible names in the photos.Labels on more than 100 victims, who had their date of death recorded, showed that date as 9 January, one of the deadliest nights for protesters in Tehran so far. The city's streets were set on fire during clashes with security forces, with protesters chanting slogans against the supreme leader and the Islamic Republic, which followed a call for nationwide protests from Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late shah. The leaked photos provide a small snapshot of the thousands believed to have been killed at the hands of the Iranian state. BBC Verify has been tracking the spread of protests across Iran since they erupted in late December, but the near total internet blackout imposed by the authorities has made it extremely difficult to document the scale of the government's violence against those who oppose it. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has publicly acknowledged several thousand people have been killed but blamed the US, Israel and those he described as seditionists. Amid the chaos, family members were documented huddled around a screen in the mortuary trying to identify their loved ones while hundreds of images of the dead flicked across the screen. The visuals starkly reveal the tragic toll of state violence against dissenters in Iran.
