Iran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.
At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.
Across the country, Iranians said they were feeling a mixture of terror and hope as the bombings continued. Some expressed relief that the long-expected strikes had arrived, and opponents of the regime spoke of hope that they might lead to political change – but both were tempered by fear that the attacks would bring more civilian deaths to a country already reeling from recent bloodshed.