HIBAPRESS
The Iranian Human Rights Agency "HRANA" announced on Saturday that the number of deaths due to the wave of protests that swept Iran exceeded 5137 people, describing this toll as "preliminary and subject to increase" with the continuation of verification and documentation operations.
The agency, which is based in Berlin, explained that it is currently investigating more than 12,000 potential deaths, while at least 7402 people sustained serious injuries during the protests and accompanying acts of violence. Activists confirmed that the process of verifying the number of deaths takes a long time due to restrictions on the flow of information, internet blocking, in addition to the disturbances that impede the work of human rights organizations, noting that the real size of the violence is still not fully clear. A clear discrepancy appears between these figures and the official Iranian estimates, as the authorities announced the death of 3117 people during what they described as "riots", while the Iranian ambassador to Switzerland said that more than 2400 people died in "terrorist activities", as he put it. The protests erupted in late December on the backdrop of a severe economic crisis, starting with the demonstrations of merchants, before extending to the major cities in Iran on the eighth and ninth of January. Leaders in Tehran described these protests as an external conspiracy, accusing Israel and the United States of being behind them and holding them responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, at a time when official rhetoric escalated against what the authorities consider foreign interference in internal affairs. In a development related to the tensions, the Iranian army escalated its rhetoric after US President Donald Trump announced the sending of a "massive fleet" to the waters near Iran, threatening to carry out a military action which he described as making the previous American strikes against Iranian nuclear sites "seem like nothing", in the event that the Iranian government proceeded with the execution of some of the protesters.
