According to a shocking report by TIME magazine, the number of protesters killed by Iranian security forces may have reached thousands, although there is no official figure yet.
Mobile phone footage, shared despite internet blockades, shows truck-mounted machine guns firing into residential neighborhoods, hospitals overflowing with gunshot wounds, and morgues overflowing with bodies.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has attempted to justify the violence, claiming that the victims were "terrorists" linked to Israel and the US.
Meanwhile, human rights organizations report hundreds of deaths, but admit that the figures are incomplete due to the breakdown of communications and difficulties in identifying bodies.
TIME cites an assessment made by an informal group of Iranian academics in exile, who, based on data from hospitals in Tehran and other cities, calculate that up to 6,178 protesters may have been killed within three days.
In one night in Tehran alone, according to this method, the number of victims may have been around 900, while the violence spread to all 31 provinces of the country.
Protests erupted after the collapse of the national currency and quickly spread to major cities such as Shiraz, Rasht and Tehran.
Witnesses quoted by TIME speak of massive use of force, including indiscriminate shooting and hundreds of serious injuries, many of them blinded by shotgun pellets.
Despite fear and losses, some protesters remain defiant.
“People want to end this system, even though they are paying with their lives,” a protester from Shiraz told TIME magazine, summing up the drama of a country experiencing one of the bloodiest repressions in its recent history.