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Tehran’s security agents dressed in plain clothes reportedly obstructed doctors from administering care to injured protesters at hospitals, according to doctors in Iran.
One medical professional said a man in his 40s was rushed to the hospital’s emergency unit after being shot in the head at close range during a protest.
When he and others tried to hurry into the room to tend to him, he said the agents blocked their way, pushing some back with their rifles.
“They surrounded him and didn’t allow us to move further,” said the doctor in the northern city of Rasht, who spoke to AP under the condition of anonymity.
The man was pronounced dead minutes later. The agents then placed his body in a black body bag, which they later transferred along with other bodies into the back of a van and drove away. Doctors say this was not an isolated incident.
Over the course of a few days earlier in January, plainclothes officers reportedly swarmed hospitals in multiple cities, treating the thousands injured in violent crackdowns on major nationwide protests against the regime in Tehran.
These agents, according to sources in hospitals, allegedly monitored and often obstructed care to patients in critical condition. They were also reported to have intimidated staff, snatched protesters and taken away the dead in body bags. They also arrested dozens of doctors for performing their duties.
Doctors in Iran and abroad say the level of brutality and militarisation of health facilities was unprecedented, in a country that for decades has experienced deadly crackdowns against protests, dissent and surveillance of public institutions.
The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights Center has documented multiple accounts from inside hospitals of security agents preventing medical care, removing patients from ventilators, harassing doctors and detaining protesters.
Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour denied reports that treatment was being prevented or that protesters were being taken from hospitals, calling them “untrue, but also fundamentally impossible.”
He was quoted in state-run media as saying all injured were treated “without any discrimination or interference over political opinions.”
Tehran has repeatedly minimised casualties in all recent protests, usually offering a figure of around 3,000, which this time it said were “terrorists” backed by the US and Israel.
The latest protests in Iran were initially sparked by persistent hyperinflation and a spike in the cost of living in December 2025, but eventually grew into nationwide anti-regime demonstrations, prompting Tehran to initiate a brutal crackdown and institute a communications blackout.
Various human rights groups and insiders in Iran have estimated that the actual death toll might have reached as many as 32,000 since December. Verifying the figures remains impossible due to the blackout.
Additional sources • AP