They review the number of deaths after two days of repression in Iran and the figure rises to 30,000.

The magnitude of the repression carried out by Iran's regime is beginning to come into view based on internal leaks that contradict the official version. The information came from high-ranking officials in the Iranian Ministry of Health.

The internal version revealed that up to 30,000 people may have died in just two days, during clashes between protesters and security forces. The data was published by TIME magazine, which obtained direct testimonies from health officials who described an unprecedented situation in the country's recent history.

If it is confirmed, the figure would far exceed the count from the government's official sectors, which acknowledge just over 3,000 deaths.

The collapse of the system for handling the dead

According to the accounts collected, the scale of the violence was such that the state itself was overwhelmed in its efforts to manage the bodies. Body bags ran out in a matter of hours and ambulances proved insufficient. This forced officials to use large semi-trailer trucks for the mass transport of the dead to improvised morgues.

Officials from the Ministry of Health acknowledged that they had never faced such a high volume of deaths in such a short period of time. The gap between the internal data and the regime's public narrative exposes a systematic attempt to minimize the real scope of the repression.

In addition, the information blackout imposed by the Iranian government made the work of independent organizations more difficult. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), based in the United States, managed to confirm more than 5,400 deaths and was investigating another 17,000 cases.

However, even those numbers could underestimate the tragedy. The German-Iranian surgeon Amir Parasta, who gathered information from hospitals and first responders, stated that he had documented 30,304 deaths by the Friday following the repression. As he explained, his record doesn't include military hospitals, where bodies are usually transferred directly to morgues without passing through civilian controls.

Direct gunfire against the population

Experts in conflict epidemiology pointed out that the speed and volume of deaths in just 48 hours has no modern precedent outside of total war contexts.

There is a clear difference from other recent scenarios, where mortality spikes are usually associated with bombings or explosives. In Iran the repression was characterized by the systematic use of live ammunition against crowds.

Medical testimonies from Tehran describe a breaking point on the night of January 8. After the start of the internet blackout, hospitals began to receive hundreds of wounded people with high-caliber gunshot wounds. Videos that managed to leave the country show snipers positioned on rooftops and vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns.

Stories that break the silence

Despite the communication blockade, some individual stories began to emerge. In Isfahan, Sahba Rashtian, a 23-year-old animation artist, died from gunfire before the protest chants had even begun.

During her burial, her father, dressed in white, declared to those present that his daughter had died "on the path to freedom".

The protests, which began on December 28 with economic and political demands, spread to about 4,000 localities according to the Iranian National Security Council itself.

The brutality of the state's response suggests that the regime perceives the uprising as an existential threat. It is something comparable to the one that gave rise to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.