Months on, Minab families mourn children killed in Iran school airstrike

Months after an American airstrike hit Minab's Shajareh Tayyebeh school, families still gather to mourn the children and teachers killed. Their grief has deepened demands for a full account of the strike and turned the site into a memorial.

In Short

• State media said 168 people died, with children forming most casualties
• One surviving girl now struggles with trauma and sleepless nights
• Teachers warned parents early, and some children were collected before impact

Families in southern Iran are still grieving months after an American airstrike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab on February 28, the first day of the war on Iran. The school has since become a place where relatives remember children and teachers killed in the attack, while questions remain over the full account of what happened.

Iranian state media said 168 people were killed in the strike, most of them children. A banner at the site lists 120 students killed - 47 girls and 73 boys - along with 26 teachers and staff, while three more children are presumed dead but their bodies were never found. An Associated Press investigation found that at least one US missile struck the school that morning, but the Trump administration has not directly accepted blame or released the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the bombing.

Almost every evening, Heydar Sadeghi sits on a bench beside the shattered remains of the school, where his 11-year-old grandson Hami and the boy's mother, Neda Salehizadeh, were killed. Recalling the moments after the explosions, Sadeghi said, "I searched the bodies for my kids, thinking maybe one would be among them." He said he called out their names, saying, "'Come with me! I've come to get you.' They weren't there," before breaking down in tears.

For Sadeghi, the day had begun like any other school day. He had driven Hami, Hami's nine-year-old sister Nila and their mother Salehizadeh, who taught at the school, there in the morning, planning to return at 1 pm. "But the bell was rung early - by Trump," he said. Hami, a fifth grader who loved football and cycling, was identified only by the clothes he was wearing because his body had been badly damaged in the blast, Sadeghi said. Nila survived after being pulled from the rubble. "Thank God, she is physically fine," Sadeghi said. "But mentally, no."

Nila and her father have since moved in with Sadeghi and his wife. He said sudden sounds frighten the girl, and though she often goes to bed in her grandmother's arms, she remains awake for much of the night. Sadeghi said he sometimes invites her friends to stay over in the hope that it will distract her. "I come here and cry," he said of his visits to the school. "Then I go home and dance in front of the girl."

The school had a girls' section upstairs and a boys' school and preschool on the ground floor. Some students were children of officers from a Revolutionary Guard base next to the school, while many others were local children from Minab, which is populated mainly by members of Iran's Baluch ethnic minority. Hormozgan province's governor has said the damaged building will be preserved and turned into a memorial and war museum. On Monday evening, several dozen people, including relatives and visitors from outside the area, gathered there. During a government-sponsored mourning ceremony held every evening, men and women, including one person in Guards uniform, spoke into a microphone about those who died and described the attack in graphic detail, leaving some visitors in tears.

A separate part of Minab's cemetery has been set aside for those killed at the school. Each grave carries a photograph of the dead, with a shade overhead and artificial grass around it so families can sit beside their loved ones. Some leave flowers and prayer beads, while others bring dishes of shuleh-zard, a saffron rice pudding eaten at funerals.

At the cemetery, Fatemeh Barani sat by the grave of her daughter, Nasim Neyestani, a second-grade teacher who was killed in the strike. Barani said staff later told her that after news emerged at around 9 am of airstrikes in Tehran on the compound of Iran's supreme leader, Neyestani feared the attacks would spread. Those initial Israeli strikes, not known at the time in the school, later killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and much of Iran's top military leadership. According to Barani, Neyestani urged the principal to cancel classes and call parents to collect their children, but the principal did not think that was necessary. Neyestani then began calling the parents of her 22 students herself, urging them to come at once.

Barani said 14 of those children were picked up before the strike, but the parents of eight others did not arrive in time. Neyestani took the eight children into the schoolyard, Barani said, but the principal told her to move them into the prayer room because it would be safer there. The prayer room was later hit, and Barani said her daughter and all eight children with her were killed. "My daughter's classroom was mostly left intact," she said. "Probably if she had been in that classroom, she would not have been killed."

Details of Barani's account could not be independently verified, but they match other accounts. The AP investigation found that several teachers called parents to collect their children before Iran's government ordered schools across the country to close at 10.15 am. The first missile struck the school about an hour later. Banners at the school say three missiles hit the site, and the principals of both the boys' and girls' schools were among those killed.

Barani said her husband and sons went to the school after the strikes and later told her that Neyestani had been killed. They found her bag, but Barani said her sons have hidden it because they fear it would deepen her pain. She said parents of children who survived because Neyestani had called them came to offer condolences, but she was so overwhelmed by grief that she cannot remember their visits. She has still not been able to enter her daughter's bedroom.

Barani said her daughter, who was unmarried, was rarely idle. She taught in the mornings, worked in the evenings as a salesperson at a cosmetics shop, and spent time at home making handicrafts, especially minakari, the traditional enamel art that she found calming. Those enamel pieces remain around the house as reminders of her. "Every day, this grief feels fresh again," Barani said.

Months after the attack, the school and cemetery in Minab have become lasting reminders of the strike, as families grieve children and teachers lost there and hold on to the memories of those who did not return home.

With PTI Inputs

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