‘Children were in pieces’: memories still raw 6 months after Iran school strike

For months, Masoumeh Zakeri has endlessly replayed the last night she spent with her nine-year-old daughter before she was killed in a strike on her school during the opening hours of the US-Israel war with Iran.

Motahreh excitedly talked about coming holidays, planned weddings and the clothes she wanted to buy. She had a Ramadan pre-fast meal shortly before dawn and then Zakeri tucked her into bed.

“I never saw her again. (That was) the last time,” the 44-year-old mother told Agence France-Presse.

Motahreh woke before her parents and took the bus to Shajareh Tayebeh school in Iran’s southern city of Minab. Hours later, the attacks on Iran began and Zakeri received a call telling her to pick up her daughter.

She did not make it in time.

By the time she arrived, the school had been struck, and Motahreh was among at least 155 people killed, most of them children – the deadliest strike yet reported by Iran.