Iran holds funeral of 165 children killed in US, Israeli attack

PARIS: Mourners gathered in the Iranian city of Minab in the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan on Tuesday for funeral of 165 school children who were killed in an alleged US-Israeli air strike on a school. The attack left nearly 100 others, including teachers and other school staff members, injured.

The grieving families gathered to bid farewell to the schoolchildren carrying small coffins and photographs of the young victims of the air strike against the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, as cries and prayers echoed throughout the city.

The ceremony came three days after what Iran’s officials said the US-Israeli terrorist strike that devastated the elementary school for girls and boys, leaving 165 children dead and nearly 100 others injured.

State television carried images showing a large crowd of mourners in Minab weeping over bodies of children wrapped in white shrouds.

UN calls for probe into deadly school strike; Pentagon says it is investigating incident

Other images released by state media on Tuesday show individuals preparing coffins draped in the Iranian flag — some bearing photographs of children.

A third clip also shared by state media shows a large crowd gathered around similar caskets with a caption in Persian reading: “Prayer service for the children of Minab.” Another aerial image showed excavators digging out at least 100 graves at an unidentified mass burial site.

Following the tragedy, Minab’s prosecutor confirmed the scale of the casualties, denouncing the “criminal” and “savage” attack.

“Among the martyrs are also educational staff and parents of the students,” he said.

The entirely civilian two-story building housed a boys’ school on the ground floor and a girls’ school on the first floor.

Chief Justice of Hormozgan Province, Mojtaba Qahremani, said on Tuesday that so far, the bodies of 140 martyrs of the school have been identified, and burial permits have been issued for them.

The identities of 25 bodies have not yet been confirmed, he added.

UN calls for probe

The UN human rights office on Tuesday urged what it called the forces behind a deadly attack on a girls’ school in Iran to investigate and share insights into the incident, without saying who it believed was responsible.

“The High Commissioner (Volker Turk) 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,” UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a Geneva press briefing.

“This is absolutely horrific,” Shamdasani said, adding that images circulating on social media captured “the essence of the destruction, despair and senselessness and cruelty of this conflict”

Unesco slams law violation

The UN education agency, Unesco, says that the bombing of a primary school during the US and Israeli military attacks on Iran on Saturday constitutes a grave violation of humanitarian law.

In a statement released on social media, Unesco expressed deep alarm at the impact of the attack on the school and noted that pupils in a place dedicated to learning are protected under international humanitarian law, and that “attacks against educational institutions endanger students and teachers and undermine the right to education”.

US ‘investigating’ incident

Neither the US nor Israel has said it was behind the strike, although US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the Pentagon was investigating.

Rubio said US forces “would not deliberately target a school”.

Iranian authorities said the explosion in Minab took place on the first day of the war on Saturday and is one of the largest single losses of civilian life.

Footage filmed from a parking lot showed black smoke billowing from a damaged building adorned with murals featuring drawings of crayons, children and an apple.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2026