Afghan immigrants shot at Iranian border

On 15 October 2024, Haalvsh, an independent Iranian human rights organisation mainly reporting on Sunni Baluch rights, released two partly blurred videos of Afghans allegedly shot near Kalagan village in the Saravan district of Sistan and Baluchistan province, Iran. The videos feature at least eight injured individuals lying on the ground while being helped by others.

Haalvsh stated that Iranian border guard forces ambushed a group of 300 Afghans who sought irregular entry to Iran on the evening of 13 October 2024, killing and injuring dozens. Haalvsh claimed that Iranian forces had also fired directly at the Afghans using Rocket-Propelled Grenades (RPGs).

Later on 15 October, Hamasa Media, an Afghan media outlet, shared a third video featuring at least four people, including two men lying on the ground and two others caring for them. The lower body of one of the men is covered with blood. One of the men assisting the victims says that the man was shot four times in his legs.

On the same day, Hamasa Media posted an uncensored version of one of the videos earlier shared by Haalvsh. It shows three-four individuals, including at least three men with various degrees of injuries, lying on the ground and being assisted by two-three others. In the background, other people are heard discussing what happened to the victims.

AW notes that the injuries on at least one of the men appear to have been caused by a blast (likely an RPG) rather than bullets. It is also noteworthy that the victims speak Pashto and mention that the incident took place in the Kalagan area, how many of them were there (10), and that they came under attack. They do not, however, specify the time or date of the incident.

All of the videos mentioned above were recorded in the dark, seemingly at night time. The people featured in them wear similar types of clothing and speak in a similar Pashto dialect, while the soil the victims were lying on also appears consistent. AW believes that all three videos were recorded by the same person in the same location, using the same device. In total, AW identified 10 people with different degrees of injuries in these three videos, all young men in their late teens to mid-20s.

On the same evening, Nedaey Baluch Media, an Afghan Baluch news agency, and later Khama Press, an Afghan media outlet, shared two audio recordings of alleged survivors of the same incident.

The first witness, speaking in Farsi with a Badghisi dialect (a province in northwest Afghanistan), claims that he was among a group of 300 people who attempted to travel to Iran through the Saravan-Kalagan route (see below). While he does not specify a date or time for the incident, he claims that Iranian forces killed 280 people, including 12 of his friends, and that those injured and killed were taken to Herat.

The second recording is also of a Farsi speaker, who claims that a group of 300 people were ambushed in Kalagan two days before [approx. 12-13 October]. He says that only 60 people survived. AW, however, has not been able to establish the total casualty toll from the incident.

Hospital footage of alleged casualties

On 16 October 2024, Hamasa Media shared a post including blurred photos of alleged casualties from the Kalagan incident, taken in a hospital. Similarly, Haalvsh shared a 30-second video showing an older man and two young men, who were alleged victims of the Kalagan shooting now being treated at a hospital in Saravan district.

In the video, the older man has severe injuries on his lower body and is lying on a bed, while the young men seem to have relatively minor injuries, with some of their legs and arms in casts. The individual recording (who sounds like a young man or a boy) asks the older man if he had been shot.

The individual recording speaks in Farsi in the Badghisi dialect, unlike the videos analysed above that mainly featured Pashto speakers. Afghanistan International, however, reported having contacted several local hospitals in Baluchistan, Pakistan, bordering Saravan, where the incident is claimed to have taken place, but received no reports of victims from the incident being treated there.

While the victims at the hospital seem to have similar lower-body injuries as those in the initial videos posted, their physical appearances do not match the victims in the initial videos. AW has been unable to verify whether their injuries were linked to the Kalagan shooting. AW, however, observes that the tiles seen on the walls and floor in the video from the hospital match those seen in an older video taken at Razi Hospital in Saravan district, Iran, posted in July 2021.

Where is Kalagan?

Kalagan is a village that marks an entry point to the Saravan district in Sistan and Baluchistan province, Iran, located 10 kilometres from the border to Baluchistan, Pakistan. According to a report from Amu TV on 17 October 2024, the Kalagan-Saravan route is one of several that human trafficking networks use to smuggle undocumented Afghans into Iran.

They start this journey in the southwestern Afghan province of Nimroz (see figure below), from where they travel for eight hours across the Pakistani border into the Dak region in Baluchistan. From there, they continue by foot for 48 hours to Mashkel, where they face another 10-hour leg by car and foot to cross the Iranian border through Kalagan towards Saravan.

Taliban establishes delegation to investigate

Hamdullah Fitrat, Deputy Spokesperson of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on 17 October 2024 that the Taliban Prime Minister had appointed a “high-ranking delegation” to investigate the Salagan incident. The delegation will be led by Mawlawi Ibrahim Sadr, Deputy Interior Minister for Security, and consists of representatives from the Ministries of Defence, Foreign Affairs, and Borders and Tribal Affairs, as well as the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI).

Mis/disinformation around the event

On 16 October 2024, the X user Javed Kundzi, who claims to be a member of the Taliban, shared a photo of the bodies of 10 individuals allegedly shot dead by Iranian forces in Kalagan. AW, however, verified that the picture had been circulated on social media before the incident in Kalagan, and actually shows miners killed in the Duki district of Baluchistan province, Pakistan on 11 October 2024.

The image was widely circulated by social media users on platforms including Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) in Farsi, Pashto, and Turkish, and was also shared on some Chinese forums and by Taiwanese media outlets. Those who shared the photo include prominent Afghan users, including the women’s rights advocate and writer Homeira Qaderi (126.3K followers), individuals related to the former government such as Sami Sadat (86.1K followers) and Ziaulhaq Amarkhil (622K followers), and the journalist Hamid Haidari (6K followers).

Subsequently, seemingly pro-Taliban social media users and at least one journalist (from Voice of America, although she later amended her post) circulated another video featuring hundreds of bodies covered in white sheets, claimed to be victims of the Kalagan incident. AW, however, verified that the video was originally shared by the pro-Taliban social media activist Prof Jawed Mohmand, and features footage of dead bodies from the Herat earthquake in October 2023.

Abuses against Afghans returning to the country

The alleged shooting by Iran’s border forces in Kalagan comes in the context of consistent reports of abuse against Afghans in Iran. In the last five years, media reported numerous incidents of violence targeting Afghan migrants in Iran, including an incident involving Iranian border guards in May 2020. Recently, in 2023, the BBC highlighted how Afghan victims of traffickers are kidnapped by criminal groups on the Iran-Turkey border. Iranian authorities also continue to forcibly deport Afghans in violation of international law.