But Qasemi said he felt a boost from seeing the father of a girl who was still buried under the rubble reassuring others.
Despite the proximity of the town of Minab, and the province of Hormozgan, to the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world’s oil flowed through on a daily basis before the war, the region is one of the most impoverished in Iran.
A Minab education official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the record, described the attack as part of what he saw as the broader injustices carried out by the United States.
“The attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab recalls the crimes committed by the United States over the past 250 years,” he said. “From the killing of indigenous peoples in the American continent to the crimes committed in Vietnam. Wars leave nothing behind except the destruction of human lives, resources and infrastructure,” he said.
An investigation by Amnesty International concluded that the school building was directly hit by a U.S. military guided weapon, killing 168 people, including over 100 children. The organization noted that the attack was “a serious breach of international humanitarian law.”
Separately, Iran’s military has been accused of targeting civilians sites across the Middle East.
Amnesty based its conclusions on an analysis of video footage and satellite imagery, as well as interviews with three individuals outside the country with knowledge of the situation in Minab.
“This harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict. Schools must be places of safety and learning for children,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns in the report. “Instead, this school in Minab became a site of mass killing. The US authorities could, and should, have known it was a school building.”
The aftermath of the attack was documented in a series of videos verified by NBC News. One video shows black smoke streaming out of a building where a wall is painted blue with flowers and the sound of a woman can be heard screaming. Another video shows men digging through rubble where an arm is sticking out.
A separate video shows a group of women wearing the traditional black chador covering sitting next to a pile of colorful backpacks. The person filming zooms in on a pink backpack that appears to be stained with blood. “The bloody backpack of a student,” the person filming says.
In a separate video, several black body bags are lined up in a row on the ground of a building. The person filming unzips one body bag to show the body of a child with a bloody head wearing a green plaid shirt. “This is the evidence of the crime of America!” the person filming shouts. “What crime did this student commit? This is evidence of the crimes of the Zionist regime! What did this child do wrong?” Bodies of children can be seen in other body bags still wearing the school’s uniform.