Crowd of Iranians crowds funeral of 168 girls murdered by US-Israel in school

A river of protesters overflowed the streets of Minab, in the south of Iran, to express their anger and demand justice for the young children – some as young as seven years old – sent flying by the criminal bombing of a girls’ primary school by the United States and Israel on Saturday (28). In addition to the students, 14 teachers were also slaughtered, with victims still recovering, rescued from under the rubble.

Family members, neighbors, friends and city residents held photos of their loved ones, showing their support for the Islamic Republic and the isolation of the attackers. Small coffins recorded how far imperialism and Zionism can go when what is at stake is their thirst for oil. In contrast to the state terrorism of the USA and Israel, the conviction and unshakable faith of a people, who chanted prayers in memory of the victims.

In comparison to the large transnational conglomerates that cited in “state sources”, references such as the Red Crescent – ​​equivalent to the Red Cross – recognized the dimension of the tragedy opened up by the aggression against the Persian country. To date, according to the Red Crescent, around 800 people have been killed in 153 locations across the country.

“Girls, little girls, at the beginning of the school day, murdered in this way, with their backpacks stained with blood: this is absolutely horrible,” declared the spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, Ravina Shamdasani. “If there is one image that captures the essence of the destruction, despair and senseless cruelty of this conflict, it is these images”, he pointed out.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, publicly held the United States and Israel responsible for the deaths, showing images of the graves where Minab’s victims were buried. “These graves are being dug for more than 160 innocent girls who were killed in the American-Israeli bombing of an elementary school. Their bodies were torn apart.”

Faced with the horror, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, demanded this Tuesday (3) a “swift, impartial and complete” investigation and warned the US and Israel that “indiscriminate attacks” constitute “serious violations” of international humanitarian law.

Cynically, US Secretary of State Mark Rubio hedged by saying that the country “would not deliberately target a school.” The same country that, with George W. Bush as president, on February 13, 1991, fired at the Amiriyah air raid shelter, in Baghdad, during the Gulf War, slaughtering more than 400 Iraqi civilians, mainly women and children. At the time, Bush said he bombed because “no one knew what Saddam Hussein was capable of.”

At this point, Rubio stalled with the line that “the War Department would look into this if it was our attack, and I would refer your question to them.”

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Article originally published in Hora do Povo