Ahmad Soltani was a third-grade primary school student.
Hoda Soltani, whose brother Ahmad Soltani and Cousin Mohammad were martyred in the American attacks on Shajareh Tayyebeh School and Rahpouyan-e Khalij-e Fars School in Minab, is one of the wounded survivors of the school attack: a fifth-grade child veteran.
Because of her burns, her hair had been shaved close to the scalp. The scarf on her head could not hide the marks of injury or the thin patches of hair. The burns on her skin were clearly visible. One of her fingers had been grafted.
She says:
“When they told us to evacuate the school, I took the hands of my brother and my cousin, who studied downstairs, and brought them into the yard, beside the water fountain. I told them, ‘Stay right here. I will go and bring my things, and then we will go home together.’
But before I reached the classroom, an explosion happened. I fell to the ground, and stones fell onto my chest.
I could not breathe. I only remember that a man came and pulled me out from under the rubble. He took off my shoes and socks. After that, I lost consciousness.”
Then she turns her innocent face toward me and says:
“Ahmad and Mohammad were both martyred together.”
Ahmad’s mother says that after school called and asked families to come and take the children home because of the war situation, she immediately called the school service driver and asked him to go and bring them. Less than ten minutes later, a terrifying sound shook the houses.
“At first, I thought they had hit our neighbor’s house,” she says. “When we went outside, my sister said they had hit the school. She was beating her head and saying it again and again.
We immediately went to school, and we did not know what to do. There were only severed hands and feet, and bodies.”
The faces of the wounded had been so badly destroyed that she could not even look at them for identification.
“I only tried to recognize them with their socks,” she says. “There were no boys to be seen, because they had been downstairs, and all of them were under the rubble.
I could not bear more than that. It is beyond understanding. They had struck innocent children who had only gone to school to study.”