Iranian forces shooting at faces and genitals of female protesters, medics say

Iranian security forces are targeting women at anti-regime protests with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts and genitals, according to interviews with medics across the country.

The Guardian has spoken to 10 medical professionals who warned about the seriousness of the injuries that could leave hundreds of young Iranians with permanent damage. Shots to the eyes of women, men and children were particularly common, they said.

Some of the other medical professionals accused security forces, including the feared pro-regime Basij militia, of ignoring riot control practices, such as firing weapons at feet and legs to avoid damaging vital organs.

The ministry of foreign affairs was approached to comment on the allegations made by the medics but has yet to respond.

And while the UN human rights council has adopted the resolution to create a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations, investigators are unlikely to be admitted to the country.

On 26 October, hundreds of medics protested outside the medical council of Iran, and were shot with pellet guns by the security forces. A surgeon from Tehran treated his colleagues who were shot in their backs and legs while running away.

It is one of the hundreds of reports that have emerged of protesters losing their eyesight after being shot by pellets at close range. The Guardian has seen photos of people with pellets lodged in their eyeballs.

One case that grew to national prominence was an attack on a student from the port city of Bandar Abbas, who was shot in her right eye. Ghazal Ranjkesh shared on her Instagram profile that she was shot while on the way back from work.

More than 400 ophthalmologists from Iran have signed a letter alerting Mahmoud Jabbarvand, the secretary general of the Iranian Society of Ophthalmology, to what appears to be the deliberate blinding of protesters.

One of the ophthalmologists who signed the letter said they had treated four patients who lost some or all of their eyesight, including one 20-year-old man whose X-ray showed 18 pellets in his head and face.

The Guardian shared photos of eye and facial injuries sustained at the protests with Iain Hutchison, an oral and facial surgeon in the UK who founded the surgical research charity Saving Faces.

Knowing that demonstrators will need medical treatment for such severe injuries, authorities have increased surveillance at hospitals. A doctor from a hospital in Shiraz said that new security guard had been stationed outside the emergency ophthalmology department late last month.

In other parts of the country, particularly in the Kurdistan region where the government has blockaded whole cities, volunteers are having to smuggle in bandages and medicine on foot.