Mourners gathered in the Iranian city of Minab on Tuesday for funeral of 165 schoolchildren killed in an alleged U.S.-Israeli airstrike on a school that also injured around 100 people, including teachers and other school staff.
The funeral ceremony came three days after what Iranian officials described as a U.S.-Israeli terrorist strike on an elementary school for girls and boys. State television carried images of mourners in Minab weeping over bodies of children wrapped in white shrouds, with several coffins draped in the Iranian flag and bearing photographs of the deceased children.
“Among the martyrs are also educational staff and parents of the students,” said Minab’s prosecutor, describing the attack as “criminal” and “savage.”
According to Chief Justice of Hormozgan Province Mojtaba Qahremani, 25 bodies remain unidentified while the bodies of 140 martyrs have been identified and buried.
Calls for probe
The U.N. human rights office has urged the “forces” behind a deadly attack to investigate and share insights into the incident—though have stopped short of identifying who it believes could be responsible. “The High Commissioner calls for a prompt, impartial and thorough investigation into the circumstances of the attack. The onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it,” said U.N. human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani.
“This is absolutely horrific,” she said, adding images circulating on social media captured “the essence of the destruction, despair and senselessness and cruelty of this conflict.”
The U.N. education agency, UNESCO, has also described the military attack on the primary school as a grave violation of humanitarian law. Expressing alarm over the impact of the attack, it noted that such assaults on educational institutions endanger students and teachers and undermine the right to education.
While neither the U.S. nor Israel have accepted responsibility for the strike, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the Pentagon is investigating the incident. He has maintained that U.S. forces would “not deliberately target a school.”