Protesters carry a large “lion and sun” pre-Iranian revolution national flag during the ‘March for a Free Iran’ organized by the UK Iranian Committee for Freedom and Stop the Hate in London, Britain on January 18, 2026.
Toby Melville | reuters
At least 5,000 people have been killed in protests in Iran, including about 500 security personnel, an Iranian official in the region said Sunday, citing unverified figures and accusing “terrorists and armed rioters” of killing “innocent Iranians.”
Nationwide protests over economic hardships began on December 28 and escalated over two weeks into mass demonstrations demanding an end to clerical rule – resulting in Iran’s deadliest unrest since its 1979 Islamic revolution.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene if protesters continue to be killed or killed in the streets. In a social media post on Friday he thanked Tehran’s leaders, saying they had canceled the scheduled execution of 800 people.
A day later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a public speech, branded Trump a “criminal” for the damage caused to Iran by supporting the protesters.
“We will not drag the country into war, but we will not allow domestic or international criminals to go unpunished,” Khamenei said, acknowledging “several thousand deaths” that he blamed on “terrorists and rioters” linked to the United States and Israel.
Iran’s judiciary indicated that the executions could go ahead.
“A number of actions have been identified as Mohreb, one of the most severe Islamic punishments,” Iranian judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said at a news conference on Sunday.
Mohreb, an Islamic legal term meaning waging war against God, is punishable by death under Iranian law.
“It is time to look for new leadership in Iran,” Trump said in an interview with Politico on Saturday.
US-based rights group HRANA said on Saturday the death toll had reached 3,308, while another 4,382 cases were under review. It said it had confirmed more than 24,000 arrests.
The Iranian official said that a “rapid increase” in the verified death toll was unlikely, adding that “armed groups in Israel and abroad” supported and equipped those who took to the streets.
The clerical establishment regularly blames foreign enemies for the unrest, including the US and Israel, staunch enemies of the Islamic Republic, which launched military attacks in June.
The violent crackdown appears to have largely calmed the protests, according to residents and state media.
A resident of Tehran said he saw riot police shooting directly at a group of protesters, mostly young men and women. Videos circulating on social media, some of which were verified by Reuters, showed security forces cracking down violently on demonstrations across the country.
Most deaths in Kurdish areas
The Iranian official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, also said that some of the heaviest clashes and highest number of deaths occurred in Iranian Kurdish areas in the country’s northwest.
Kurdish separatists have been active there and the incidents that erupted in previous rounds of unrest have been the most violent.
Three sources told Reuters on January 14 that armed Kurdish separatist groups tried to cross the border from Iraq into Iran in a sign of foreign entities potentially trying to take advantage of the instability.
“I am against the regime and I have taken part in protests, but I have seen some armed men disguised as protesters shooting at civilians. They were not ordinary protesters; they had guns and knives,” an Iranian from the northwestern city told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Norway-based Iranian Kurdish rights group Hengo said the heaviest clashes during protests in late December took place in Kurdish areas in the northwest.
Getting information from Iran has been complicated by an internet blackout, which was partially lifted for a few hours on Saturday morning. But Internet monitoring group NetBlocks said the blackout appeared to have been reimposed later.
Faizan Ali, a 40-year-old medical doctor from Lahore, said he had to cut short his trip to Iran to meet his Iranian wife in the central city of Isfahan because “there was no internet or communication with my family in Pakistan”.
Upon returning to Lahore, he told Reuters, “I saw a violent mob burning buildings, banks and cars. I also saw a person stabbing a passerby.”
