Iran Holocaust

Melina Asadi

Melina Asadi was three years old when Iranian security forces shot her at a funeral in Javanrud, Kermanshah province, in January 2026. Who she was, what happened, and how her case fits the record of children killed in the Crimson Winter.

Protesters in an Iranian city during the January 2026 uprising, the month Melina Asadi was killed in Javanrud
January 2026: protests spread to more than 400 Iranian cities. In Kurdish towns such as Javanrud, funerals for the dead became the next targets. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Born
2022 · Javanrud, Kermanshah province, Iran
Died
January 2026 · Javanrud · age 3
Cause
Gunshot wounds — security forces firing on mourners at a funeral
Context
The Crimson Winter crackdown, December 2025 – February 2026
Documented by
HRANA, Hengaw, Iran Human Rights

Who was Melina Asadi?

Melina Asadi was three years old. She lived in Javanrud, a Kurdish town in Kermanshah province in western Iran, in a district where almost every family knew someone who had been shot, detained or dismissed from work since 2022. She had not been to school. She had no politics. In January 2026 she was taken to a funeral — the ordinary obligation of a small town in mourning — and she was killed there by security forces firing on mourners.

Her name appears on the verified lists of children killed during the Crimson Winter, the wave of protest and repression that ran from late December 2025 through February 2026. She is one of the youngest.

Javanrud, January 2026

Javanrud has a particular place in the record of the Islamic Republic's violence against Iran's Kurdish population. It was among the towns placed under effective military occupation in November 2022, and it was again among the first places where the January 2026 crackdown turned lethal. Funerals in Kurdish cities have long functioned as the only permitted form of public assembly, and the state has repeatedly treated them as protests to be dispersed with live ammunition.

That is what happened to the gathering Melina attended. Mourners were fired on. A three-year-old child died. In the pattern documented across dozens of Kurdish and Baluch towns, each funeral produced the next funeral, and each next funeral produced more dead.

A death that fits a pattern

Melina Asadi is not an isolated case, and that is the point of recording her name. Bahar Hosseini, also three, died in Neyshabur the same month after tear gas was fired into a residential courtyard. Mohammad Qasem Rousta, 14, was shot walking home in Marvdasht. Reza Ghanbari, 16, was killed by a sniper in Kermanshah. HRANA's verified Crimson Winter list recorded 236 minors among the confirmed dead by 23 February 2026 — a figure that monitors treat as a floor, not a ceiling, because thousands of cases remained under review.

Children killed in these circumstances are rarely acknowledged by the state. Families are commonly told that the death was an accident, pressed to sign statements, warned against speaking to foreign media, and in some cases prevented from holding a public burial.

Why this page exists

Searches for a child's name often lead to a fragment of a social-media thread and nothing else. Threads are deleted, accounts are suspended, and the record thins until only the regime's version survives. This page exists so that the name Melina Asadi resolves to a citation-ready account with dated context and links to the organisations that verify these cases.

If you have documentation about her death — photographs, funeral records, testimony — the monitoring organisations listed under sources and methodology accept secure submissions.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Melina Asadi?

Melina Asadi was a three-year-old girl from Javanrud in Kermanshah province, western Iran. She was killed in January 2026 when Iranian security forces opened fire on a funeral gathering during the Crimson Winter crackdown.

How did Melina Asadi die?

She was shot at a funeral in Javanrud in January 2026. Funerals in Iran's Kurdish cities are routinely treated by security forces as unauthorised assemblies and dispersed with live ammunition.

Where was Melina Asadi from?

Javanrud, a predominantly Kurdish town in Kermanshah province in western Iran, one of the areas hit hardest by the 2022 and 2026 crackdowns.

How many children were killed in the 2026 Iran protests?

HRANA's verified Crimson Winter list recorded 236 minors among 7,007 confirmed deaths as of 23 February 2026, with 11,744 further cases still under review. Independent monitors treat the verified figure as a minimum.