Public anger has mounted after security forces guarding a military base in central Iran opened fire on two cars, killing four members of a family including a three-year-old girl named Raha Sheikhi.
Authorities said the shootings occurred when forces guarding a military facility in the city of Khomein opened fire on two suspicious vehicles. A local governor later confirmed the deaths of four civilians in the incident.
The victims were named as Mohammad-Hossein Sheikhi, Mahboubeh Sheikhi, their three-year-old daughter Raha, and a woman identified as Farzaneh Heidari, believed to be the family’s sister-in-law.
"The perpetrators of this incident are currently under arrest," said Ebrahim Gamizi, the public prosecutor in Khomein, who announced the opening of a judicial investigation.
The government did not specify which body the shooters belonged to. However, a number of social media accounts, including one saying to represent the Sheikhi family, said the assailants were members of the Basij paramilitary force and that the shooting occurred at a checkpoint.
Several posts said that Heidari’s child is also in a coma due to gunshot wounds.
'Another Kian'
Images of Raha Sheikhi circulated widely online, with social media users comparing her death to that of nine-year-old Kian Pirfalak, who was killed during the 2022 anti-government protests when forces opened fire on his family’s car in Izeh, Khuzestan province.
Dozens of users described Raha’s killing as a repetition of Kian’s, accusing authorities of targeting unarmed civilians under the guise of enforcing tightened security following the war with Israel.
Exiled prince Reza Pahlavi wrote on X: “The bloodstained hands of Khamenei’s IRGC and Basij have once again taken the lives of innocent children of Iran. In the city of Khomein, they slaughtered the Sheikhi family including a baby girl, Raha.”
“It shows the true nature of a desperate and criminal regime—one that can no longer even protect its own leaders and resorts instead to taking revenge for its humiliation by murdering children.”
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi said in a statement that the Sheikhi family was killed with military weapons and “the child’s voice was silenced by the sound of gunfire as her chest was torn apart in her parents’ arms.”
Mohammadi linked the killings to broader patterns of lethal force at checkpoints, citing the deaths of women in a village near Khash and several young men in Hamedan. “There are no bombs or rockets—but bullets rain down. There is no war—but fire rains down."
Checkpoints become flashpoints
The Khomein shootings follow a string of recent incidents at checkpoints operated by the Revolutionary Guards and its Basij paramilitary forces since Iran’s 12-day conflict with Israel in June. Officials have expanded internal security measures in the wake of the conflict, increasing the number of stop-and-search stations on highways and in cities.
On July 2, the IRGC-linked Fars News Agency confirmed that security forces fatally shot two young men—Mehdi Abaei and Alireza Karbasi—near Hamedan, west of Iran. They had been on a hiking trip. Their funeral drew chants of “I will kill whoever killed my brother.”
Authorities have routinely pledged to investigate such killings, but there has been no public reporting on disciplinary action or legal proceedings against the shooters. Instead, survivors and bereaved families have often faced pressure to remain silent and abandon legal claims.
In one of the most recent cases, 32-year-old Arezou Badri was left with severe spinal injuries after being shot by police in July last year, for allegedly violating mandatory hijab rules inside her car.
A pattern unbroken
Despite official pledges of transparency and justice, authorities have provided no updates in similar past cases. In the Pirfalak case, officials initially accused a dissident named Mojahed Kourkour, later executing him in June on charges of “enmity against God,” despite denials of his involvement by Kian’s mother, Mahmonir Molaeirad.
In posts featuring images with Kourkour’s mother, Molaeirad repeatedly insisted that security forces were responsible for her son's death and that the Islamic Republic was “trying to bury the truth.”
The repeated killings at checkpoints, and what critics see as impunity for the perpetrators, continue to fuel public mistrust.
