Iranian security forces gunned down dozens of protesters trying to escape a devastating blaze in the Caspian Sea city of Rasht during a nationwide uprising earlier this month, according to four witness accounts provided to The Washington Post.
The bloodshed came after days of mounting public protest in the city against the Iranian government, including the mass closure of shops by merchants in Rasht’s historic bazaar.
After the open-air market caught fire, protesters who had sought refuge from security forces within its labyrinthine alleys began to flee and were confronted by uniformed riot police and plainclothes officers, on motorcycles and on foot, armed with shotguns and assault rifles, according to one protester’s account. Security forces were firing directly at the people, another Rasht resident said.
“Security forces were shooting with Kalashnikovs into the bazaar,” Saman, a witness who participated in the protests, said in an interview. “It was terrifying. They killed so many people, even people escaping.”
The forces also blocked fire trucks from immediately responding to the fire, two witnesses said. More than 30 businesses ultimately burned inside the bazaar, which was reduced to a gray husk, or along Shariati Street just outside, a Post review of available visual imagery found.
The Post analyzed more than 40 photos and videos and collected six witness and resident testimonies to put together a detailed reconstruction of the regime’s crackdown during the peak of unrest in Rasht. Due to the government’s shutdown of internet and telephone service, few such detailed accounts have emerged from Iran until now, especially from outside the capital city of Tehran.
Yet the tragic events in Rasht, located about 200 miles northwest of Tehran, were just a small slice of the staggering crackdown carried out by security forces in dozens of towns and cities across Iran as authorities suppressed mass protests this month.
Data collected by medical staff in and around Rasht and shared with The Post by an intermediary show more than 80 fatalities just at two hospitals in the city during the two days when the violence peaked. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) has documented 392 deaths in Rasht, virtually all of which took place on or after Jan. 8, when the communications blackout began.
Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency stated last week that the “regime’s ill-wishers and rioters” in Rasht had attacked the city’s bazaar and nearby mosques, blaming the United States and Israel for sending “their mercenaries to kill this bazaar and its people.”
Here is how the events unfolded.
Protests spread to the bazaar
Iranian protests first erupted Dec. 28 in Tehran, prompted by the collapse of the country’s currency. They quickly spread across the country with demonstrators broadening their demands to call for a complete change in Iran’s government.
In Rasht, smaller protests took place during the initial days of January, then grew more serious when shop owners in the bazaar began to strike in solidarity, two Rasht residents told The Post. Like others interviewed for this article, the residents spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from authorities.
“My friends who are store owners told me that intelligence officers would call them and try to pressure them to re-open their shops and end the strike. There was tension between the bazaar and the state,” said Saman.
Another Rasht resident said in an interview that he heard a similar account from a business owner near the bazaar, who said that members of Iran’s Basij paramilitary force and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which were suppressing protests, had threatened striking shop owners and ordered them to re-open. The merchants balked and were told by the security forces that they would “badly regret” refusing, the Rasht resident recounted.
On Wednesday, Jan. 7, dozens of people marched through the bazaar clapping and chanting, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. We are all in this together,” video published to social media and verified by The Post shows.
Hundreds took to the streets that night, chanting and calling for the fall of the regime. The atmosphere across the city of more than 700,000 grew volatile as the number of protesters soared, said one Rasht resident.
“From Wednesday onward, the protests grew much larger, and many more people took to the streets,” the Rasht resident told The Post. He added that by Thursday, commerce in the city was effectively shut down by the merchants’ strike. “Only a few pharmacies and small grocery stores were open.”
Security forces open fire
By the evening of Thursday, Jan. 8, protests across Iran were reaching a critical point and in Rasht, they, too, had arrived at a crucial moment. Protesters poured into the streets in the south of the city and marched toward the center, stopping traffic and surrounding cars, horns blaring, videos verified by The Post show.
Others joined the protests by walking south along Takhti Street toward the bazaar, according to a written account from a shop owner involved in the protest provided to The Post by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a human rights group focused on Iran, and video verified by The Post.
“There was a flood of people coming from every street that connected to the main road,” said the person, according to the written account.
“The crowd was so massive that at every street or alley we passed, more people kept joining us,” said another Rasht resident, adding that he saw families with children and people of all ages in the crowds. He noted that things were relatively calm until after 8:30 p.m., when security forces started shooting directly at people.
One protester said that as the crowd approached the bazaar, security forces initially tried to disperse them with tear gas but that the demonstrators were determined to keep going. That’s when security forces began shooting directly at the crowd, said the man, in the account provided by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center. People fell to the ground.
Northeast of the bazaar, near a government building, a smaller group of protesters wandered across the median strip of an empty road, according to one video. A few held makeshift shields as they weaved around scattered debris and small fires.
Then, screams erupted amid bursts of gunfire and booms. The person filming held their phone steadily and said: “They’re shooting a young person. They hit their leg. They just shot a young person! Rasht, Provincial Governorate. We’ve seen nearly eight or 10 people killed or injured in the last five minutes. The Guard, the Guard is shooting,” referring to the IRGC.
“Massacred before my eyes”
The bazaar had long been a vibrant center of city life in Rasht and was famed across Iran for its culinary and cultural offerings. When the blaze broke out, flames engulfed not only the market but buildings and cars along the streets leading to it, videos geolocated by The Post show.
Saman, who was marching toward the bazaar, said he saw it catch fire around 9 p.m. Another protester said that some of the demonstrators were inside the bazaar seeking refuge from the gunfire when it caught fire. It was not immediately clear how the fire began or spread. The city was swept up in strong, hot winds that night, according to two witnesses, suggesting the fire spread rapidly.
Saman said he witnessed security forces with their faces covered shooting at people trying to escape the blaze. “Anyone that was coming out of the bazaar was under barrage. [Security forces] were shooting at them from Shariati Street,” he said. He added that he knew four people who were shot dead that night.
Another protester recounted a similar scene in the account provided by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center. Forced by the fire to flee the bazaar, protesters emerged into the direct sights of the armed security forces, some riding motorcycles, he said. “My contemporaries were massacred before my eyes,” the man said, according to the account.
A Rasht university student told The Post they also saw security forces shoot their fellow students amid the fire. “People didn’t know whether to run or to rush toward the security forces. Everything felt apocalyptic,” the student said.
Saman recalled that security forces didn’t allow fire trucks to respond to the scene until after 1 a.m. A live broadcast on state television at 12:52 a.m. on Jan. 9, about four hours after he said he saw the market catch fire, shows flames still raging in the background, and plumes of orange and red flames continued to tower above the bazaar by the time fire trucks finally arrived at the scene, additional videos show. At the same time, pedestrians are seen scurrying past them and around the burned debris lining Shariati Street.
Another Rasht resident who lives near the bazaar said he saw people who had been killed and wounded as he made his way home on Thursday night. “The closer we got, the louder and more intense the gunfire became, and the street was covered in blood,” he said.
The aftermath
By the next morning, Shariati Street was littered with the debris of roofs, doors and windows of store fronts that burned down. Beige-colored shops had been reduced to burned charcoal, video published on X and verified by The Post shows.
Smoke continued to rise above the bazaar as the fire still smoldered, drone imagery published by state television on X shows. Inside the bazaar, metal rolldown storefront shutters were crumpled and shards of glass blanketed the ground, video shows.
Not long before, protesters had been chanting in these very spots.
Two witnesses told The Post that authorities pressured families of victims not to publicize what happened.
“I personally know nearly ten people who died during the Thursday or Friday protests, whose families — under pressure — have refused to let their cases be made public,” said the Rasht resident who lives near the bazaar.
Likewise, Saman recounted, “I know people who took their [dead] children not to a hospital or an official doctor because they’re afraid that [authorities] would seize their bodies and not give it back to them. They took the body and buried it in their gardens or farms so it wouldn’t fall in the hands of the state.”
An unknown number of protesters in Rasht were arrested, and their fate is unknown. One Rasht resident said a family he knows has been searching for their son in the city’s morgues and hospitals, only to learn he had been detained, though they still do not know where he is being held.
In the days after the bazaar burned, Rasht residents continued to protest, video shows, despite the strict curfew they said authorities have imposed.
“A city turned to ash before our eyes, and we burned with it,” said the university student. “We witnessed the collapse and burning of this bazaar while people were terrified and under fire.”
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