An ophthalmologist in Tehran has seen over 400 eye injuries from gunshot wounds in a single hospital amid a brutal crackdown on protesters in the Islamic Republic, The Guardian reported.

Medical staff said that most protesters were shot in their eyes and heads—a tactic used against Iranians during the 2022 protests after the death of Mahsa Amina, a 22-year-old Iranian woman beaten to death in jail after being arrested for allegedly violating the dress code.

“[Security forces] are deliberately shooting at the head and the eyes,” a doctor in Tehran told The Guardian. “They want to damage the head and the eyes so they can no longer see, the same thing they did in [2022].” The doctor added that many of the patients had to have their eyes removed and were blinded.

“Eyes were hit by birdshot pellets, and it was deliberate; they are shooting to kill,” he elaborated. A colleague added that they had removed 20 pellets from the body of a single protester.

“This was a mass-casualty situation. Our facilities, space, and personnel were far below the number of injured people arriving,” the doctor said, describing the scenes in the hospital. “My colleagues are very distressed, tired and horrified. They are breaking down in tears.”

Iranian doctors say that the world is underestimating the death toll in Iran.

“The images and data broadcast by the international media do not represent even one percent of the reality, because the information simply does not reach them,” a physician who left Iran told the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran on Monday.

As YWN reported in 2024, many Iranians felt vindicated after Israel targeted Hezbollah in the “exploding pagers operation,” which blinded many of the terrorists, as during the 2022 protests, Iran had flown in Hezbollah terrorists to carry out the cruel work of deliberately blinding young protesters by aiming at their eyes with buckshot and pellets.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)