Bloody Friday of Zahedan (Jom'e-ye Khunin) is the killing of worshippers and protesters in Zahedan on 30 September 2022 (8 Mehr 1401), and the Friday marches that followed. The day sits inside Woman Life Freedom. It is kept as its own note because Baluchi families and monitors treated that Friday as a massacre of its own, not as a footnote.¹

Zahedan is a Baluchi, largely Sunni city. After Friday prayer at the Great Mosalla near Makki Mosque, people moved toward Police Station Number 16. Molavi Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi, the Sunni Friday prayer leader, said the station opened fire first, including into the Mosalla and at people walking home. He said most of the shots hit heads and hearts. He rejected the state's story that Jaysh al-Adl or another armed group had started it.¹²

How many people were killed

The provincial line at first was a few dozen, then a medical-legal figure of 25. Baluchi recorders named far more.

Haal Vsh, days after the shooting, published 91 dead, including at least seven children. Named children in that early list included Jaber Shirani, Sudis Kashani, Mohammad-Iqbal Naebzehi, and Samer Hashemzehi. Four years later Shir Ahmad Shirani, Haal Vsh's editor, told Iran International that the site's verified file for Bloody Friday and the days after had risen toward 130 dead and more than 500 wounded.¹²

The official 25 and the Baluchi named lists are not the same count. The lower number is the one the state wanted believed.

After 30 September

Friday protests continued in Zahedan and across the province. Abdolhamid later pointed to a similar, smaller killing in Khash on 13 Aban. Families are still asking for the order-givers. The Woman Life Freedom note covers the wider 2022 rising. This note stays on Zahedan so the day remains selectable on the map.²

This archive

"Bloody Friday of Zahedan," "Zahedan Bloody Friday," and close spellings are gathered here.