At a ruined Iranian school, families grieve and wait for answers after a U.S. strike killed 120 children

MINAB, Iran (AP) — The sun set over this southern Iranian city, and Heydar Sadeghi was where he has been almost every evening since the strike: on a bench beside the shattered remains of his grandson’s school, his face wet with tears.

A banner hung around the rubble carries the faces of children and teachers killed here by an American airstrike on Feb. 28, the first day of the war on Iran. Among the photographs are Sadeghi’s 11-year-old grandson, Hami, and the boy’s mother, Neda Salehizadeh, a teacher.

“I searched the bodies for my kids, thinking maybe one would be among them,” Sadeghi said Monday evening, recalling how he rushed to the school moments after the explosions. He shouted their names, he said. “‘Come with me! I’ve come to get you.’ They weren’t there.” He wept as he spoke.

The Shajareh Tayyebeh school has become a place for mourning and remembrance, where relatives try to absorb an impossible loss: children dropped off for a day of classes and never seen again. A memorial banner at the site lists 120 students killed — 47 girls and 73 boys — as well as 26 teachers and staff members. Three more children are presumed dead, their bodies never recovered.

An Associated Press investigation found that at least one U.S. missile struck the school that morning in Minab. There has been no final accounting of the attack. Iranian state media have said 168 people were killed. The Trump administration has yet to directly accept blame or release the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the bombing.

For Sadeghi, the day began like every school day. He drove Hami and Hami’s 9-year-old sister, Nila, to school with their mother, Salehizadeh, who taught at the school. As usual, he expected to pick them up at 1 p.m. “But the bell was rung early — by Trump,” he said.

Hami was a fifth grader who loved soccer and riding his bicycle. His body was so mangled by the blast that relatives could identify him only by his clothes, Sadeghi said. Nila was pulled alive from the rubble.

“Thank God, she is physically fine,” Sadeghi said. “But mentally, no.”

Nila and her father have moved in with Sadeghi and his wife. A sudden noise frightens her; she often falls asleep in her grandmother’s arms but stays awake much of the night. Sadeghi frequently invites Nila’s friends over in the hope that their presence will distract her. He wants to see her smile again, so he lets himself grieve at the school, out of her sight.

“I come here and cry,” he said. “Then I go home and dance in front of the girl.”

The building had a girls’ school upstairs and a boys’ school and preschool on the ground floor. Some students were children of officers at a Revolutionary Guard base next to the school; many were local children from Minab, a city that is predominantly Baluch.

The governor of Hormozgan province, where Minab is located, has said the damaged building will be preserved and turned into a memorial and war museum.

Several dozen visitors gathered at the site Monday evening, among them relatives of the dead and people from outside Minab who came to see the ruins. At a government-sponsored mourning ceremony held every evening, men and women — including one in a Revolutionary Guard uniform — took turns at the microphone, telling wrenching stories about the dead and describing the attack in graphic detail. Some visitors broke down weeping.

A separate section of Minab’s cemetery has been set aside for those killed at the school. Every grave carries a photograph of the dead beneath a canopy, with artificial grass around it so families can sit beside their loved ones. Some place flowers and prayer beads on the graves; others bring dishes of “shuleh-zard,” a saffron rice pudding served at funerals.

Fatemeh Barani sat by the grave of her daughter, Nasim Neyestani, a second-grade teacher at the school, on Monday. Barani comes several times a week to sit with her daughter.

She has pieced together Neyestani’s last hours from what other staff members later told her. Around 9 a.m., word arrived that airstrikes in Tehran had hit the compound of Iran’s supreme leader. At the time, those at the school did not know that the initial Israeli strikes had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and much of the country’s top military leadership.

Neyestani was alarmed, fearing wider strikes, and urged the principal to cancel classes and call parents to collect the children, Barani said. The principal did not think it was necessary. Neyestani began calling the parents of her 22 students herself, urging them to come as quickly as possible.

Fourteen of those children were picked up before the strike, Barani said. The parents of eight others did not arrive in time.

Neyestani took the eight children into the schoolyard, her mother said. But the principal told her to move them into the school’s prayer room, believing it would be safe. The prayer room was hit. Barani said her daughter and all eight children with her were killed.

“My daughter’s classroom was mostly left intact,” Barani said. “Probably if she had been in that classroom, she would not have been killed.”

Barani’s account could not be independently verified, but it aligns with other accounts. The AP investigation found that several teachers called parents to pick up their children before Iran’s government ordered schools closed nationwide at 10:15 a.m. The first missile hit the school about an hour later. Banners posted at the school say three missiles struck. The principals of both the boys’ and girls’ schools were among the dead.

After the attack, Barani’s husband and sons went to the school. They found Neyestani’s bag, but Barani said they have hidden it from her because they fear it would cause her more pain. Parents of children who escaped because Neyestani called them have visited the family to offer condolences, but Barani said grief has left her unable to remember those visits.

She still has not been able to enter her daughter’s bedroom. Neyestani, who never married, taught in the mornings and worked some evenings at a cosmetics store. At home she made handicrafts, especially “minakari,” the traditional art of decorating metal and jewelry with enamel. The enamel work relaxed her, Barani said.

The pieces she created are still around the house, each one a reminder of her daughter.

“Every day, this grief feels fresh again,” Barani said.