MINAB, IRAN — The Iranian Red Crescent has confirmed a devastating humanitarian toll following a joint military operation by Israel and the United States on February 28. Reports indicate that over 1,900 people, including a significant number of women and children, were killed, while nearly 20,000 others sustained injuries.
Among the most harrowing scenes of the conflict is the total destruction of the Shajareh Tayyibe School in Minab, where a missile strike turned a place of learning into a graveyard of ash and concrete.
A Morning of Terror
For Marzi, a local resident, the nightmare began with a sound like a “massive clap of thunder.” Initially hoping it was a domestic accident involving her young son, Mohammad, she was soon met with a second, more violent explosion that shook her home to its foundations.
Minutes earlier, Marzi had received a cryptic, panicked phone call from her eight-year-old daughter Zahra’s teacher. the school was closing immediately; Zahra needed to be picked up. By the time Marzi’s husband, Hossein, reached the site, the primary school—just blocks away—had been reduced to a mountain of smoking rubble.
Searching the Ruins
The scene at the school was one of pure desperation. Parents, including Hossein, clawed through the dust and stones with their bare hands, fueled by the fading hope of finding their children alive.
“I kept digging because every child under that rubble was like my own,” Hossein recalled, describing the hours he spent moving debris even after the sun had set.
Tragically, the family’s hopes were shattered when Hossein identified his daughter through a photo circulating on social media. At the morgue, he found Zahra. Despite severe injuries to her head and chest, her father noted with a breaking heart that her face remained “calm and peaceful.”
A Call for International Justice
The strike on the Minab school claimed the lives of approximately 160 students and teachers. Despite the scale of the tragedy, official accountability remains elusive. While the U.S. military announced an investigation, President Donald Trump has maintained that the U.S. bears no responsibility for the civilian casualties.
The grieving families are now turning to the international community for answers. “The world must know this was not a military base; it was a school,” Hossein stated. The victims’ families are calling upon the United Nations and the International Criminal Court to recognize the strike as a war crime and to ensure that those responsible are held to account.
As the smoke clears over Minab, the soil—stained with the blood of innocents—stands as a silent witness to a tragedy that has left a nation in mourning.
