This figure significantly exceeds the official reports of 3,117 deaths announced on January 21 by entities subordinate to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and it is also considerably higher than the data from human rights defenders. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, by Saturday, 5,459 deaths had been confirmed, with an additional 17,031 cases under verification.
TIME clarifies that it has not yet been able to independently verify this data; however, estimates from sources within the Ministry of Health align with counts conducted by doctors and emergency service workers. According to German-Iranian ophthalmic surgeon Amir Parasta, the number of deaths recorded in hospitals reached 30,304 as of Friday. He also emphasized that this statistic does not include cases from military hospitals or fatalities from regions that researchers could not access.
According to data from the Iranian National Security Council, protests took place in approximately 4,000 localities across the country. Dr. Parasta added that the actual number of victims could be even higher. Experts studying mass killings note that such a scale of mortality over 48 hours requires historical analogies.
