A doctor who fled Iran after treating injured protesters during the ongoing unrest there has provided first-hand testimony about mass casualties and overwhelmed hospitals, saying that "the images and data from international media do not reflect even a single percent of the reality there, because the information is simply not reaching them."
The doctor, who provided medical assistance from January 6 to 10 and gave a statement to an Iranian human rights organization in New York, believes that several hundred people have probably been killed in Isfahan alone in recent days.
He says the victims include children, the elderly and mere bystanders. They were killed at close range simply because they were in public places, not because they were taking part in the protests. Witnesses told him of vans with machine guns mounted on them, driving through the streets and shooting at people.
The testimony given to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based organization, was published today on its website. The doctor's name was not disclosed.
The interview was published, as stated, "to alert the international community - governments around the world, the United Nations and major media outlets" to what is happening in Iran, "through credible evidence of massive, unlawful, deadly state violence against protesters and the extraordinary scale of state killing, injury and repression."
"All of this remains largely hidden because the Islamic Republic has shut down the internet and other communications with the rest of the world," it added, noting that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij volunteer paramilitary formations were sent against the protesters.
The doctor talks about the events in hospitals and on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan, about the use of live ammunition and military weapons against civilians, with shotguns no longer being used since January 8th, but instead shooting at close range from automatic weapons and machine guns, which are typically used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The doctor says he personally heard the sounds of those weapons.
"From midnight (Thursday, January 8) onwards, the calls we were getting weren't about shotgun wounds. People were saying they were being hit by real bullets that entered one side of their body and exited the other. Live ammunition," the doctor said.
He also stated: "This was a mass casualty situation. Our facilities, space capacity and staff were far less than the number of injured people arriving," the doctor said.
It is his personal belief that the security forces are acting on orders that do not imply any responsibility on their part, and that demonstrations are not treated as civil protests but as a war scenario, according to the principle of "go and suppress (the protests) at all costs".
According to the doctor, hospitals are overwhelmed with victims, they are overloaded, and a very high number of emergency surgeries are being performed for gunshot wounds, especially severe injuries to the head, chest and abdomen. The doctor notes that many people arrived at the hospitals dead, and they could not even be identified because of the wounds - often to the face.
In hospitals, he said, there are security forces who systematically monitor and intimidate doctors, collecting names, ID numbers and personal information of patients. This discourages people from seeking medical help that could save their lives.
According to him, the telecommunications outage does not only concern the internet and telephone networks - connections to emergency and fire services, as well as navigation and payment systems, have also been "down", obstructing medical, emergency and humanitarian aid.
The scale of the killings is far greater than what officials and media are reporting. Based on the conditions in the hospitals and what he saw, the doctor says that several hundred people were probably killed in Isfahan alone, although the exact number cannot be determined due to the breakdown in communications.
The doctor talks about the chants at the demonstrations. "They are very explicit - 'Death to Khamenei,'" he says, stressing that the young protesters are extremely brave and that "the level of anger and desperation is such that they even accept a ten percent chance of being killed - to bring this to an end."
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