'Streets full of blood'

Demonstrators speak from the frontlines

- Deepa Parent William Christou

Sarah felt she had little left to lose. The 50-year-old entrepreneur in Tehran watched as prices soared higher while her freedoms shrank each year.

So, when protesters started gathering in the affluent Andarzgoo neighbourhood of Tehran on Saturday night, she was quick to join them. In a video sent to the Guardian via her cousin who lives abroad, people walk through the street, joyous, despite a halo of tear gas hanging over their heads.

The crowd was mixed, with families and elderly people walking side by side. The mood was calm, until security forces approached, raised their assault rifles and began to shoot at the unarmed protesters at close range.

The next video she sent was hurried. "Shameless!" she repeated again and again as she drove away, the crackle of gunshots audible as people hurried past.

On Thursday, Iran went dark. Authorities shut down the internet and the ability to call abroad, cutting the country off from the rest of the world. The government's rhetoric, initially conciliatory, quickly changed. Gone were the offers of dialogue, replaced by threats of death sentences for protesters, who the government accused of being backed by Israel and the US.

What happened next was documented in grainy videos and panicked messages sent by activists who managed to grab a momentary Starlink connection before GPS scrambling shut down their line.

Crowds of thousands have marched across the country each night, chanting "Death to the dictator", a reference to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and for the return of the Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled Iran prior to its 1979 revolution.

A 19-year-old student activist told the Guardian on Friday: "We are marching in [our] thousands tonight. I saw children on the shoulders of their parents, a grandmother chanting 'Death to Khamenei' while she's decked up in a chador [black robe]. Do you realise how significant this is?"