With new supreme leader’s strong connections to the IRGC, critics fear worse is to come – if he survives

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At around midday, even as airstrikes hit several parts of the capital, large crowds gathered in Tehran’s famous Enghelab Square to chant their allegiance to Iran’s new supreme leader.

Carrying banners showing the face of the country’s slain leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, people on Monday held a new portrait – that of his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei.

Residents report terror of smoke-filled city, from potentially toxic rain, air and water to food scarcity and difficulty of escape

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• Iran threatens to attack oil facilities across Gulf after Israeli strikes

Thick black smoke was still rising in the sky, soot covered the streets and cars, balconies filled with black gunk, and the toxic air had filled the lungs as Tehran woke up after a night of airstrikes on the city’s oil depots on Sunday.

In messages and voice notes sent to the Guardian, people described the situation in their homes and on the streets, some calling it “apocalyptic”. With the sun blotted out, disoriented people in Iran’s capital had to turn on their lights to see through the gloom.

People tell of scenes of panic during airstrikes on Iran’s capital, with several saying they feared they would die

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Sleeplessness, fear and exhaustion gripped residents of Tehran as successive waves of strikes struck the Iranian capital, judging from messages sent by people in the city after the latest overnight onslaught, which several described as the worst bombardment in six days of war.

With Iran imposing a near-total internet blackout, information emerging from inside the country is fragmentary and difficult to verify. But in a series of accounts sent through proxy connections, and calls with friends abroad, Tehranis described a night of intense explosions.

Police say Masood Masjoody was most likely murdered; Iranian expats suspect he was killed for his criticism of the theocratic regime

Police in Canada have concluded that a missing Iranian activist was most likely the victim of murder, prompting fears that his disappearance has the hallmarks of a transnational repression campaign targeting critics of Tehran.

Masood Masjoody, a mathematician critical of both Iran’s theocratic regime and the exiled family of the former shah, went missing in early February in the city of Burnaby, British Columbia.

A strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school during the US-Israeli bombing campaign killed up to 168 people. The Guardian has pieced together the incident and its aftermath using verified footage and images from the site

Above the pastel murals of trees, paintbrushes, crayons and microscopes, black smoke rises. The glass windows of the school have been blown out by the force of the blast, and its curtains hang shredded from the frames.

Against one burned-out wall, the remains of a playground lie scattered: a red plastic slide, a jumble of child-sized chairs. On an overturned bookshelf a pair of pink plastic sandals have been neatly placed, now covered in dust from the blast.

As US-Israeli airstrikes hit their cities, people tell of how the authorities are warning them off the streets

More than 700 civilians have been killed since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran last weekend, according to rights groups, as people inside Iran told the Guardian they were fearful of a rising death toll.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society said that at least 555 people had been killed across Iran. However, in its latest report, the US-based Human Rights Activist news agency, has reported at least 742 civilians have been killed, including 176 children. The near total internet blackout makes independent verification of the exact figures extremely difficult as rights group warn the numbers could rise.

Some publicly mourn leader’s demise but videos also show jubilant response after violent crackdown in January

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Celebration and mourning broke out across Iran in response to the death of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in an extraordinary public response to the end of nearly four decades of the top cleric’s rule.

In the squares of Tehran, crowds gathered to mourn the leader, chanting and holding placards with his image. But videos shared widely on social media also showed people celebrating, dancing, honking car horns and setting off fireworks as news of the leader’s death broke.

The building appears to be among many devastated in Trump’s ‘major combat operations’ as long expected attacks arrive

• Full report: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed

• US-Israeli attack on Iran – live updates

• What we know so far: US and Israel wage war on Iran

Iran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.

At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.

As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality

More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.

The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.

Exclusive: Expert analysis of images from one hospital suggests severe trauma to the face, chest and genitals was caused by metal birdshot and high-calibre bullets

Across the planes of Anahita’s* face, white dots shine like a constellation. Some gleam from inside the sockets of her eyes, others are scattered over the young woman’s chin, forehead, cheekbones. A few float over the dark expanse of her brain.

Each dot represents a metal sphere, about 2-5mm in size, fired from the barrel of a shotgun and revealed by the X-ray camera for a CT scan. Shot from a distance, the projectiles, known as “birdshot”, spray widely, losing some of their momentum. At close range, they can crack bone, blast through the soft tissue of the face, and easily pierce the eyeball’s delicate globe. Anahita, who is in her early 20s, has lost at least one eye, possibly both.

The Guardian has constructed a timeline for the terrible events of one night of protests in Rasht, based on first-hand accounts, video and photographs

On Thursday 8 January, Iran went dark. In the midst of massive national protests, the government shut down the internet, phone calls, and almost all communication out of the country. That evening a violent crackdown began. In some cities, government forces opened fire on crowds, killing thousands – according to some estimates, possibly tens of thousands – in two days of bloodshed. The internet blackout has meant that a clearer picture of what happened – drawn from witness reports, videos, photographs and testimony from hospitals – has taken time to assemble.

When the violence began, there were demonstrations taking place in more than 200 cities, according to human rights groups. This is the story of what unfolded in one of them.

Euphoric scenes are a snub to theocracy’s culture of piety, say analysts, and carry message of rebellion

Iranians killed in recent protests that rocked the country have been laid to rest in boisterous funerals featuring loud pop music and dancing, apparently intended to convey defiance to the ruling Islamic regime.

Instead of holding sombre traditional mourning ceremonies presided over by a Shia cleric, bereaved relatives are turning the burials into exultant celebrations of the lives of their loved ones in what analysts say is an intentional snub to the culture of piety demanded by Iran’s theocracy.

Testimony from medics, morgue and graveyard staff reveals huge state effort to conceal systematic killing of protesters

On Thursday 8 January, in a midsize Iranian town, Dr Ahmadi’s* phone began to buzz. His colleagues in local emergency wards were getting worried.

All week, people had taken to the streets and had been met by police with batons and pellet guns. With treatment, their injuries should not have been too serious. But emergency room staff believed many wounded young people were avoiding hospitals, terrified that registering as trauma patients would lead to their identification and arrest.

Two people detained in Kermanshah, including 16-year-old, tell group they were subjected to sexual abuse during arrest

A 16-year-old was among protesters sexually assaulted in custody by the security forces in Iran during the nationwide uprising that has left thousands dead, according to a human rights group.

Two people, one of them a child, detained in the city of Kermanshah in western Iran told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) that they were subjected to sexual abuse by riot police during their arrest.

President issues warning amid speculation Donald Trump plans to assassinate or remove supreme leader

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, warned on Sunday that any attack on the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be a declaration of war.

In an apparent response to speculation that Donald Trump is considering an attempt to assassinate or remove Khamenei, Pezeshkian said in a post on X: “An attack on the great leader of our country is tantamount to a full-scale war with the Iranian nation.”

Many believed a US president would – for the first time – rescue them but now people can only despair after mass arrests and brutality

When Donald Trump, said he would “rescue” protesters if Iranian authorities started shooting, Siavash Shirzad believed the US president.

The 38-year-old father had seen protests rise up before, only to be brutally crushed by authorities.

But this was the first time in his life that the president of the United States had promised to help demonstrators. Reassured, Shirzad took to the streets, ignoring his family’s warnings and joining the growing crowds.

Protesters face execution as the Iranian regime continues its violent crackdown, defying the US president, Donald Trump, who has threatened ‘very strong action’ if demonstrators are killed. Erfan Soltani, 26, is the first protester to be sentenced to death, but it is unclear whether or not his execution has taken place. Lucy Hough speaks to journalist Deepa Parent about what she is hearing from those inside Iran

Doctors in Tehran tell of overwhelmed medical staff as violent crackdown intensifies

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An ophthalmologist in Tehran has documented more than 400 eye injuries from gunshots in a single hospital, as overwhelmed medical staff struggle to cope with the toll of an increasingly violent crackdown on nationwide protests by Iranian authorities.

Three doctors, in messages forwarded to the Guardian on Monday, described overwhelmed hospitals and emergency wings overflowing with protesters who had been shot. Medical staff said the gunshot wounds were mostly concentrated on protesters’ eyes and heads – a tactic that rights groups said authorities used against demonstrators in the country’s 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Tehran issues warning after Donald Trump says US stands ready to help amid crackdown on demonstrations

• ‘The streets are full of blood’: Iranian protests gather momentum as regime cracks down

Iran has warned the US not to attack over protests that have rocked the country, as Donald Trump weighed the options for a response from Washington, with the reported death toll from the demonstrations soaring to the hundreds.

At least 538 people have been killed in the violence surrounding demonstrations, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, including 490 protesters. The group reported that more than 10,600 people were arrested by Iranian authorities.

Videos emerging despite internet and mobile phone blackout show demonstrations continuing despite reports of escalating crackdown

Demonstrators have continued to take to the streets of Iran, defying an escalating crackdown by authorities against the growing protest movement.

An internet shutdown imposed by the authorities on Thursday has largely cut the protesters off from the rest of the world, but videos that trickled out of the country showed thousands of people demonstrating in Tehran overnight into Saturday morning. They chanted: “Death to Khamenei,” in reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and: “Long live the shah.”