Obscene US-Israeli murder of Iranian schoolchildren cannot be whitewashed

Western media is either silent or implicitly blaming Tehran for the strike that killed 168 girls

March 4, 2026, RT.com

-by Eva Karene Bartlett

In Iran, under ongoing US-Israeli attacks, a mass funeral took place today for 168 Iranian schoolgirls aged 7-12, killed by an Israeli airstrike on February 28.

The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, southern Iran, in broad daylight, when the children were at school. Fourteen teachers were also killed in the bombing. The bombing occurred as part of US-Israeli attacks sadistically dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’, attacks which have to date targeted schools, hospitals, residential areas and other civilian infrastructure.

It was a scene all too familiar to Palestinians: grief-stricken parents collapsing sobbing at the site of their daughters’ murders, clutching bloodstained backpacks, pulling out schoolbooks and personal items of their slain daughters. Children’s desks covered in debris from the bombing. A child’s shoe in the rubble. Death where life had flourished.

None of this is being conveyed by Western legacy media – only ghoulish gloating over the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran and the murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his young granddaughter and children.

On March 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted a photo of the graves being dug on X, noting, “These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds. This is how “rescue” promised by Mr. Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood.”

At the time of this writing, 69 of the murdered girls remain unidentified.

International media reaction: Silence

If the bombed school had been in Israel or Ukraine, news of it would have been plastered on front pages of Western media for days, with widespread demands for retaliation, or at least for justice and accountability. Back in 2016, Western media alleged Syria or Russian planes had injured Aleppo boy Omran Daqneesh. His photo went viral, for weeks, even years. A CNN news anchor fake-sobbed for the boy.

In 2017, in his Aleppo home, his father told me their home was not hit in an airstrike, but rather terrorists shelled it and used the boy in a cynical, and effective, photo op.

Footage shared on Telegram and on X clearly show horrific scenes of some of the young girls torn apart in the US-Israeli bombing of their school. But just like the untold thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel, as well as the half a million Iraqi children killed by US sanctions, these Iranian children’s lives don’t merit Western media outrage. Instead, they produce cynical reports that not only lack any semblance of empathy, but suggest that Iran is either lying about or is to blame for the murders.

Take the BBC’s report, which describes the massacre as a “reported” strike on a school, which “Iran has blamed the US and Israel” for. Casting doubt is standard for legacy media whitewashing the US and Israel’s crimes. The US is “looking into reports.” Israel is “not aware.” Just one of those mysterious unknown strikes.

The BBC then overtly blamed the Iranian government as untrustworthy, writing, “Deep mistrust of the Iranian regime, however, makes official reports difficult for many to accept, and some Iranians directly blamed the regime for the attack.”

The BBC did similarly dishonest and deceptive journalism in 2014 in Damascus after terrorists in eastern Ghouta had shelled an elementary school, killing one child and injuring over 60. The BBC later reported: “the government is also accused of launching [mortar strikes] into neighborhoods under its control.” The BBC could have easily learned about the trajectory of mortars and from where the strike in question could only have come: the terrorist “moderates” east of Damascus.

The New York Times also got the memo, likewise omitting Israel from the headline and implying Iran is lying. But when it comes to blaming Iran for its retaliation, the NYT has no problem stating whose missile strike it was. And there is no “Israel says.”

CNN ran the headline “A girls’ elementary school was hit in Iran. Here’s what we know.” Its video report not only doesn’t mention the US or Israel, but insinuates Iranian blame: In an Israel-like tactic (recall Israel’s claiming Gaza’s Shifa hospital was a “Hamas base”, and staging weapons as “proof”), CNN claims the children’s school could be connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) base. But The Cradle noted that the school had operated independently as a civilian institution for over a decade, with separate entrances, playgrounds, and classrooms.

CNN’s report did, at least, debunk online claims that the school was hit by a failed missile launch by Iran, noting the photo shared online as “proof” of the claim was actually taken 800 miles from Minab. But, hello? If it wasn’t a failed Iranian missile there is clearly one remaining explanation: the schoolgirls were killed by US-Israeli bombing.

Most Western media cite The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) as saying it was “looking into reports of the incident,” and the Israeli army as saying it was “not aware of any IDF operations in the area.”Ah yes, the guilty shall investigate themselves. Right.

Even if you set aside the actual culprit of the school bombing, legacy media reports are devoid of any concern for the slaughtered children: no details, no empathy, no mention that they were murdered in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The tone would be radically different were the children Israeli, Ukrainian or American. We would see names, ages, stories about them. They would be humanized – if only they were not Iranian (or Palestinian, or Lebanese, or Syrian).

Alireza Akbari:“All the students seen in this video, at Shajareh Tayyebeh School, were martyred”

Since the February 28 Minab school massacre, US-Israeli strikes have attacked still more civilian infrastructure, killing and injuring more Iranian civilians.

As of March 5, the death toll in American-Israeli aggression against Iran has raised to 1,405. In Lebanon, meanwhile, at least 72 people have been killed & about 100 injured since Monday.

One man recounted to RT how after the bombing of central Tehran’s Enghelab Square he’d seen a decapitated person in front of his café. Walking around showing the destruction, RT’s Tehran bureau chief Hami Hamedi pointed out residential buildings, cars, shops, damaged and destroyed in recent bombings where a police station was among those targeted.

This was the same tactic which Israel used on December 27, 2008, when it unleashed over 100 bombs nearly simultaneously on Gaza, targeting police stations, police academies, universities and more, destroying and damaging shops and residential buildings around them.

I was in Gaza at the time and saw the immediate aftermath of the initial bombings, the chaos and destruction in every direction. Shifa hospital, Gaza’s main hospital, was an endless circuit of cars and ambulances bringing the dead and injured.

That was 17 years ago, and Israel has repeated this brutal tactic over and over again in Gaza, Lebanon and now Iran. We’ve seen this US-Israeli strategy of terrorizing the people by widely attacking civilian infrastructure repeatedly in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, to list only some of the targeted regions – as well as being replicated by the Kiev regime in the Donbass. The intent is always destabilization and instigation of fear in hopes of causing the people to turn against their government. It never works, but it invariably kills countless innocent civilians and flattens infrastructure.

To add further insult, days after the girls’ school massacre, Melania Trump presided over a UN Security Council meeting on children in conflict. You can’t make this insanity up. The wife of a US president who is co-waging a war on children in Iran feigns concern over children in conflict.

The US and its bought media have so little regard for Iranian lives that they don’t even bother to try to explain, much less apologize for, the murders of the 168 schoolgirls. Outrageously, it is as if they simply never existed to Western media.

But it is true that every war crime, every murdered child, fuels support not only to their government but to resistance in general. And Iran is resisting and retaliating in ways that will make the US wish it hadn’t co-started this war on the people of Iran.

Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the US-Israeli massacre of Iranian schoolgirls:

“The monstrosity of the situation lies both in the very fact of the aggression, the colossal number of victims in these very first days, and the lack of an adequate response from those who are killing innocent people.

You have probably noticed that no words of sympathy or condolences were spoken. Only aggressive rhetoric.

They managed to talk about everything except one thing: Not a single word of sympathy for the relatives who suffered the loss. Fathers and mothers who will never see their children again...”

https://t.me/Reality_Theories/29912

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

According to Geopolitics Prime: “Israel and the US want the world to look away. But one man owns this strike — IDF Chief of Staff, Gen. Eyal Zamir.”

Here’s why he’s accountable:

🔴 Strikes abroad are approved by the General Staff — and the first waves are personally ordered by its Chief. That’s Zamir.

🔴 Target selection and timing are managed by the Operational Directorate, in lockstep with the Chief of Staff.

🔴 Zamir himself praised the “significant achievements” of the first day’s strikes. He knew exactly what — and who — was hit.

Lebanese Journalist, Marwa Osman, provided a more detailed account of civilian infrastructure targeted by US-Israeli bombing since February 28:

The elementary school in the city of Minab was just one of the first civilian locations targeted by American/Israeli brutal aggression; many more have been attacked during the past 5 days. Here are some of them:

• Residential areas in Niloufar Square, Tehran (over 20 innocent people were killed)

• A densely populated residential complex in Sanandaj, western Iran

• The historic Radio Citadel and Golestan Palace, south of Tehran

• Gandhi Hospital, Tehran

• Tehran Grand Bazaar, Tehran

• Abuzar Hospital, Ahvaz, southwestern Iran

• The vicinity of the Iranian Red Crescent Society building, Tehran

• Khatam al-Anbia Hospital, Tehran

• The Welfare Organization, Tehran

• Motahari Hospital, Tehran

• Vali-Asr Hospital, Tehran

• Trauma and Burn Hospital, Tehran

• Ameneh Infant Care Centre, Tehran

• Shahid Rajaei Heart Hospital, Tehran

• Residential homes surrounding Sepah Square, Tehran

• Residential areas in Maragheh, northwestern Iran (over 27 innocent people were killed)

• Baqaei Hospital, Ahvaz, southwestern Iran

• Emergency medical base, Chabahar

• Emergency medical base, Sarab, northwestern Iran

• Emergency medical base, Hamedan, central Iran

• Hazrat Abolfazl Hospital, Minab, southern Iran

• Shahid Mahallati Primary School, Tehran

• Hedayat School, Narmak, Tehran

• A sports hall in Lamerd, Fars Province, southern Iran (18 innocent boys and girls were killed)

• 35 innocent people were killed in Fars Province, central Iran

• Bazaar in Baharestan Square, central Tehran

• A park for children in Tehran

• Emergency medical centre, Tehran

• A kindergarten in Narmak

• Residential homes in Narmak district, Araghi st., Marzdaran blvd, Tehran

• Arg Square, The historic Radio Citadel and Golestan Palace, south of Tehran

• Attack on Mir-Damād Boulevard, causing damage to residential and medical facilities

• Attack on 2 headquarters of the Diplomatic Police