The elementary school called with an urgent message about her son. “The war has begun,” she was told. Bring him.
The mother, who asked not to be identified, said she had just dropped off the boy and couldn’t leave immediately because she was seeing patients at her job as a midwife. Then the earth shook. And she ran.
It was too late. According to the town’s mayor, Shazareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab was hit by three airstrikes, killing 168 people. Many of them had children. One of them is her son.
“By the time we got there, the whole school had collapsed on the kids,” the mother told NBC News. “People were pulling out children’s limbs. People were pulling out severed heads.”
Four days later, grief and outrage grew over the school deaths, a flashpoint for opposition to the US and Israeli strikes. There is also anger and uncertainty over the fact that no one has accepted responsibility for the highly publicized civilian casualties since the start of the war.
More people gathered to bury the children on Tuesday, according to video and images published by state media. There is a mass grave with rows and rows of what look like individual graves dug side by side.
The US and Israel hit thousands of targets inside the country, killing nearly 800 others, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei., According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
Tehran is striking back by hitting Israel and several other countries in the region allied with the US, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. Six US service members were among those killed in its counterattack, as well as 11 in Israel, while dozens have been killed in Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Asked about the death on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that US forces “did not intentionally target the school”, adding that the Defense Department would “investigate it if it was our strike”.
Over the weekend, US Central Command, or CENTCOM, said it was looking into reports of civilian deaths. The Israeli military has so far refused to comment.
According to satellite footage, the school was found to be near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) site, British broadcaster BBC News reported.
Speaking to NBC News, both Minab Adhikari and the mother said that the school facility was built on IRGC basis. The base was closed about 15 years ago and all military personnel moved out, although the school remains open, he said.
Satellite imagery from 2011 shows the building as part of the same compound before it was later fenced off.
Ali Farhadi, a spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Education, said on Sunday that three attacks had taken place at the school, which had 264 students.
“The school was bombed in broad daylight, when it was full of young students,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday.
“These crimes against the Iranian people will not go unanswered,” he warned.
