Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30,000, According to Local Health Officials

Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30,000, According to Local Health Officials. Two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME that as many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran, indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll. The government’s internal count of the dead far surpasses the toll of 3,117 announced by regime hardliners. The 30,000 figure is also far beyond tallies being compiled by activists. The Health Ministry’s two-day figure roughly aligns with a count gathered by physicians and first responders, and also shared with TIME. A slaughter on that scale, in the space of 48 hours, had experts on mass killing groping for comparisons. The only parallel offered by online databases occurred in the Holocaust. In Iran, the killing fields extended across the country where, since Dec. 28, hundreds of thousands of citizens had assembled in the streets chanting first, for relief from an economy in freefall, and soon for the downfall of the Islamic regime.