Araghchi vows international push over deadly Minab school strike
‘Do not let my friends be forgotten,’ surviving pupil demands
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pledged to pursue legal and international action over a US strike on a primary school in southern Iran that killed 168 people, most of them children, after receiving a letter from a pupil who survived the attack.
Araghchi said the letter from Fatemeh-Zahra Sheikhabadi, a survivor of the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, had reinforced the Foreign Ministry’s responsibility to document the incident and hold those responsible to account.
The school was struck by Tomahawk missiles on the first day of the US-Israeli war against Iran. The attack killed 168 people, most of them girls and boys attending the school.
In an Instagram post on Sunday, Araghchi said he had received the letter on the sidelines of an international conference titled “Ecocide: The Silent Crime”.
“I consider it my duty to take Fatemeh-Zahra’s voice and the story of Minab’s children to international forums and not allow the passage of time to push the truth of this tragedy and the need for accountability into the background,” he said.
In her letter, Fatemeh-Zahra remembers classmates Niyayesh, Sonaz, Zeinab and Baran, who were killed in the strike.
“I survived, but they are no longer here,” she writes, adding that she is still asking why she remains alive while her friends are gone.
The pupil also questions why the United Nations has not acted over the incident or done more to protect children’s rights. Referring to children’s right to education and play, she asks: “Why did this have to happen to us? Why can’t we be together anymore?”
Araghchi said the letter represented more than a call for sympathy for the families of the children killed. “Our real responsibility is to document the truth, pursue legal and international action, and hold those who carried out and ordered this crime accountable,” he wrote.
The top diplomat also said the names of children killed in Minab and Lamerd, in southern Iran, should endure “not only in people’s memories, but also in the pursuit of justice”.
In the letter, Fatemeh-Zahra describes returning to her school desk and looking at the empty seat beside her. Before the attack, she writes, she and her friends studied, laughed, played and made bracelets from palm leaves.
“Please do not let my friends be forgotten,” she ends with an appeal.
Araghchi said he would work to ensure their stories reached the international community.