Thousands of mourners filled the streets of a town in southern Iran on Tuesday during the funeral for victims of an airstrike on a girls’ elementary school, according to footage and images verified by The New York Times. The strike ranks among the deadliest attacks of the American-Israeli campaign against Iran.
The bombing of the school, which took place on Saturday, killed at least 175 people, many of them students attending class at the Shajarah Tayyebeh school, in the town of Minab, according to local health officials and Iranian state media. Several videos and images verified by The Times showed that at least half of the two-story building was destroyed in the explosion.
More than 800 people have been killed in the conflict across the Middle East since Saturday, when the United States and Israel launched their opening attacks on Iran, killing the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Iran responded with waves of retaliatory rocket and drone attacks against various countries in the region.
Before the funeral in Minab on Tuesday, workmen dug rows of graves at a cemetery about five miles from the elementary school, according to video footage verified by The Times.
The procession of mourners swarmed around a truck loaded down with coffins. Some people wailed in grief as others showered caskets with sweets and rose petals, according to videos verified by The Times. Aerial photographs showed mourners at the cemetery as the coffins were lowered into the graves. Videos showed the crowd engaged in prayer and chanting in support of the Islamic republic.
The school was next to a naval base belonging to Iran’s most powerful military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The school building was once part of the military site, satellite images reviewed by The Times show, but by 2016, the building had been walled off and was no longer connected to the base.
Neither the Israeli nor U.S. government has directly addressed the strike on the school. But the U.S. Central Command said on Saturday that it was “aware of reports concerning civilian harm” and was “looking into them.”
The strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh was one of two attacks that appeared to have hit schools on Saturday. Another strike appeared to have hit the Hedayat High School in Iran’s capital, Tehran, near 72nd Square in the district of Narmak, local media and rights groups said. Two students died in that attack, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which focuses on Iran.
Intentionally attacking a school, hospital or other civilian structure is a war crime, and indiscriminate strikes also violate international law. Even if schools are used for military purposes, the law requires armed parties to avoid or minimize harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Malachy Browne is enterprise director of the Visual Investigations team at The Times. He was a member of teams awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2020 and 2023.
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