ISTANBUL — Iran’s nearly week-long protests, sparked by economic despair but quickly widening into demands for broad change, have turned deadly, with multiple human rights groups saying that several people had been killed by security forces.

President Donald Trump issued a warning on social media Friday, writing that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment on what kind of aid Trump was referring to.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran had tallied seven killings by Friday, according to spokeswoman Bahar Ghandehari, while the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran said in an email Friday that it had documented the killings of eight people during the protests thus far.

Arina Moradi, a spokeswoman for the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, said that 11 people have been killed so far, including a 15-year-old. Those reported killed were all men, mostly in their 20s and 30s.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency, which follows Iran closely, said Thursday that 119 Iranians had been arrested, seven killed and at least 33 injured. It said protests had occurred in at least 32 cities across Iran.

Fars News, which is affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that two people had been killed in the city of Lordegan during unrest there. The Tabnak news site, which is affiliated with a senior Iranian official, said three people had been killed in Azna, in western Lorestan province, during an attack on a police station.

Rights groups reported the killing of a 37-year-old man, Dariush Ansari, in Fouladshahr, near the major city of Isfahan. Authorities appeared to dispute the circumstances of that death, with Mehr News, a semiofficial outlet, reporting that he had died of injuries sustained during a fight in front of his house, and that investigations into his “murder” had commenced.

The deaths were mostly clustered in Lordegan in southwest Iran and two cities in Lorestan province. The Washington Post could not independently verify the circumstances of the killings.

Iranian authorities have acknowledged one death, Amirhesam Khodayarifard, who they claim was a member of the Basij militia force deployed to suppress unrest. A judiciary official in Lorestan province, where Khodayarifard was killed, said the government would “identify the perpetrators of this incident and deal with them in accordance with the law.”

In voice messages obtained by The Post, a person close to Khodayarifard’s family, with direct knowledge of the events, described immense pressure on the family to accept the government’s narrative that he was a member of the Basij militia.

The person, whose messages were shared on the condition that they not be named, because of the attention the family has received from security forces, also provided details on a tense funeral held for Khodayarifard on Friday, during which authorities sought to depict him as one of their own.

Khodayarifard was protesting Wednesday evening when he was shot in the back and neck, the person said. Authorities, including members of parliament and local religious leaders, then repeatedly pressured his father, Heshmat, to say his son was a member of the Basij and had died as a “martyr,” the term authorities use to refer to people killed in the course of defending the government or for causes it has approved.

But Heshmat refused the requests, even after authorities first offered him money and then threatened to withhold Khodayarifard’s body, the person said. Heshmat, a farmer of modest means, told the officials that they could either give him the body for burial or they could keep it, but that he would not respond to the blackmail.

Authorities then brought Khodayarifard’s body to the cemetery on Friday, but tried to cast the funeral as a state event. Officials attended despite the family’s wishes, enraging some in the crowd that had gathered.

The crowd chanted protest slogans as they held Khodayarifard’s body aloft. Around 30 men wearing Basij and Revolutionary Guard uniforms approached the burial site. The crowd began throwing stones, the person said, an account corroborated by video from the funeral showing attendees hurling rocks and chasing out uniformed men.

Later, the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, said “rioters” had shouted obscenities and thrown stones during the funeral. It referred to Khodayarifard as a “martyr.”

Iranian authorities’ response to the protests have so far run counter to the rhetoric of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has said the protesters have legitimate demands and told reporters on Thursday that “if people are unhappy with us, we are the ones at fault.”

The most recent protests started Sunday with shopkeepers in Iran whose businesses have been wrecked by the sharp depreciation of the Iranian rial in recent weeks. The demonstrations then spread throughout Tehran and to cities across the country, and drew in other elements of Iranian society, including university students.

Some videos have shown security forces shooting toward demonstrators, and such actions fit a documented pattern from past rounds of protest in Iran, especially in recent years.

At least 321 Iranians were killed by security forces during mass protests in November 2019, according to Amnesty International. A U.N. fact-finding mission found that authorities had carried out “unnecessary and disproportionate use of lethal force” in response to protests in 2022 that were sparked by the killing of a woman in police custody.

It was unclear what Trump meant by his “locked and loaded” remarks when he pledged support for Iranian protesters Friday. Even with the U.S. military reorienting much of its combat power toward Venezuela in recent months, thousands of U.S. troops remain in the Middle East and land-based fighter jets are stationed in several countries.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Defense Department “stands ready to execute” the president’s orders “at any time and in any place.” Another U.S. official with knowledge of operations in the region said there were no immediate changes to U.S. military posture in the Middle East following Trump’s remarks. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Past American presidents have sometimes been hesitant to wade into overseas protests, wary of committing U.S. involvement and unsure of how to navigate another country’s domestic politics.

Foreign leaders’ pledging support for protests in Iran and other countries has “always been a balancing act,” said Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“Can you ‘rescue’ protesters if things turn really violent? Obviously your possibility of rescuing individual protesters is bordering on nonexistent,” Bildt wrote in an email Friday. “The heavier you go into supporting the protests, the more you are responsible for what comes next. ”

Dan Diamond and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.