Thousands of mourners have filled the streets of the southern Iranian city of Minab for the funeral of 168 schoolgirls and staff killed in an attack on an elementary school on the opening day of the US-Israeli strikes.
These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds.
This is how “rescue” promised by Mr. Trump looks in reality.
From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood. pic.twitter.com/cRdJ3BELOn
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) March 2, 2026
Images from the funeral show row upon row of small, shallow graves – the final resting places of children aged mostly between seven and 12.
Participants dressed in mourning black and carried photographs of the deceased as the funeral procession moved through the city’s main square. Mourners carried coffins one after another, beating their chests in grief.
According to the Iranian government, 168 students at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school have been confirmed dead, along with at least 14 teachers and staff members and four parents who were at the school when the strike occurred.
Buried under the rubble
The school in Minab, in the province of Hormozgan, was struck on the morning of February 28 – the first day of the unprovoked US-Israeli military campaign that also killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other officials. According to Iranian officials, US and Israeli fighter jets carried out five airstrikes on the school, which was holding morning classes at the time. A nearby clinic was also hit hours later.
In the aftermath, grief-stricken parents gathered at the site of the destroyed school desperately waiting for answers amid the rubble. One father told local reporters that he arrived at the school to find “a very difficult and heartbreaking scene” with students and teachers “buried under the rubble.” He accused “criminal America” and Israel of being “the child-killers.”
Search operations concluded days later, with the final death toll standing at 168 schoolgirls. Hospital morgues were overwhelmed, forcing authorities to use refrigerated trucks to preserve bodies. The head of the Hormozgan Supreme Court, Mojtaba Ghahremani, confirmed that the majority of the victims have been identified but that 25 were still unrecognizable. Some families lost multiple children.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted images of the graves on X, stating: “These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds. This is how ‘rescue’ promised by Mr Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood.”
