Fashion student ‘shot in back of the head’ among hundreds killed in Iran

By Jon Gambrell Updated January 12, 2026 — 6.18pm first published January 11, 2026 — 5.14pm Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Dubai: US President Donald Trump says the Iranian government had called him “to negotiate” and he has been in touch with the country’s opposition leaders, amid an escalating war of words between the United States and the Tehran regime. Iran has threatened to target US military bases if Trump carries out his renewed threats to intervene on behalf of protesters, while Trump has reportedly been briefed on military strikes and other interventions the US could enact against the country. “The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options,” Trump told reporters travelling on Air Force One on Sunday night. He also said the leaders of Iran wanted to negotiate. “I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States. Iran wants to negotiate with us.” Iran’s parliament speaker on Sunday (Monday AEDT) said the US military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if the US were to strike the Islamic Republic over the ongoing protests roiling the country. Later on Monday, Iran’s foreign minister told foreign diplomats “the situation has come under total control” after the bloody crackdown on protests, but offered no evidence to support the statement. This screen grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters once again taking to the streets of Tehran despite an intensifying crackdown by authorities. Credit: AP Abbas Araghchi also said that the protests “turned violent and bloody to give an excuse” for Trump to intervene. At least 544 people have died in violence surrounding the demonstrations, according to the US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency, but there are fears the death toll is far higher . Advertisement The dead include 23-year-old Rubina Aminian, a Kurdish student who was shot at close range in the back of the head on Thursday after she had left her college in Tehran to join the protests, according to the group Iran Human Rights. Sources close to Rubina Aminian described her to Iran Human Rights as “a young woman full of joy for life”. Sources close to the Aminian family told the Norway-based group her parents had been taken to a location near their daughter’s college to try to identify her, and were confronted with the bodies of hundreds of young people killed during the protests. “It wasn’t just my daughter; I saw hundreds of bodies with my own eyes,” her mother said, according to a statement provided to the human rights group. Demonstrators again flooded the streets of the Iranian capital, Tehran, and the second-largest city at the weekend, marking two weeks of unrest and nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy, during which more than 10,000 people have been detained,...

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