Staff at hospitals in Iran said their facilities have become overwhelmed with injuries - including of people suffering from gunshot wounds - as anti-government protests are raging across the Islamic Republic, a report said.
A doctor from Tehran's Farabi Hospital, which is the city's main eye specialist center, told the BBC late Friday that the facility entered crisis mode, with emergency services slammed and non-urgent admissions suspended.
A medic from a hospital in the city of Shiraz also told the network that large numbers of injured people were being brought in despite the hospital not having enough surgeons to treat them. He added that many of those wounded had gunshot injuries to the head and eyes, according to the BBC.
As of Saturday, the death toll in the protests has grown to at least 72 people killed and over 2,300 others detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
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The protests began late last month with shopkeepers and bazaar merchants demonstrating against accelerating inflation and the collapse of the rial, which lost about half its value against the dollar last year. Inflation topped 40% in December. The unrest soon spread to universities and provincial cities, with young men clashing with security forces.
At a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, President Donald Trump said Iran was facing mounting pressure.
"Iran's in big trouble," Trump said. "It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago. We're watching the situation very carefully."
Trump warned that the United States would respond forcefully if the regime resorts to mass violence. "We'll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn't mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts."
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Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signaled a coming clampdown, despite U.S. warnings, according to The Associated Press.
Tehran escalated its threats Saturday, with the Iran's attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, warning that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an "enemy of God," a death-penalty charge. The statement carried by Iranian state television said even those who "helped rioters" would face the charge.
"Prosecutors must carefully and without delay, by issuing indictments, prepare the grounds for the trial and decisive confrontation with those who, by betraying the nation and creating insecurity, seek foreign domination over the country," the statement read. "Proceedings must be conducted without leniency, compassion or indulgence."
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered support for the protesters.
"The United States supports the brave people of Iran," Rubio wrote Saturday on X.
Fox News' Efrat Lachter and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
