Sara Behboudi

Sara Behboudi (Persian: سارا بهبودی; also spelled Behboodi) was a 45-year-old mountaineer from Rasht, the capital of Gilan Province. She was an active member of Iran's climbing community, and fellow climbers remembered her as dedicated, hardworking and deeply devoted to the mountains and to nature. Among the summits she had reached were Mount Kamal, about 3,700 metres high in the Sahand range of East Azerbaijan Province, and Shah Moallem, about 3,050 metres high in Gilan.

On the evening of Friday, 9 January 2026 (19 Dey 1404), during the nationwide uprising, she was killed in Rasht when Islamic Republic forces fired military ammunition at protesters. According to reports by IranWire and the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, security forces opened fire on unarmed people without any effective warning, and she died after being struck directly by a bullet. Hengaw named her among six women killed in those days, three of them Gilaks, together with Sanam Pourbabaei and Shoaleh Setoudeh; with these cases the number of women Hengaw had documented as killed in the protests reached twenty-six.

HRANA has confirmed her death in its record of the winter 2026 killings, with Rasht in Gilan as the place she died. Iran International's Javidnaman memorial records her age as 45, while some later social media tributes give it as 40. In the weeks after her death, people who shared her photograph remembered her as one of the brave women of the country who stood beside the people.