By Mahmoud Aslan in Lamerd, southern Iran
Dozens of teenage girls were attending their regular training sessions of volleyball, basketball, and gymnastics in the main sports hall in Lamerd, a city near the Persian coast, when a missile slammed into the building at 5pm on Saturday.
Additional strikes hit two nearby residential areas and a hall adjacent to a school, as the US and Israel pounded targets across Iran on the first day of what President Donald Trump declared as a “regime change” war.
According to local officials cited in Iranian state media, the strikes on Lamerd killed at least 18 civilians and wounded scores more.
“Within seconds of the missile strike, the windows shattered into thousands of fragments. Sports equipment, balls, tables, barriers flew through the air. Black smoke filled the space,” Mohammed Saed Khorshedy, a 29-year-old worker at the gym who witnessed the attack, told Drop Site News.
“The smell of gunpowder made breathing almost impossible. The screaming began immediately, layered with the sound of debris collapsing and concrete falling from the ceiling.”
The facility sits on the outskirts of Lamerd, a quiet city in Fars province, near the surrounding Zagros mountain range, giving the natural landscape an uneven, rugged character.
Gym building at crossroads
The rectangular building is at a crossroads connecting the city center to Bandar Assaluyeh, an industrial port and energy hub on the Persian Gulf.
The sports hall was poorly maintained, with deteriorating walls surrounded by a low perimeter fence. A high arched metal roof sat atop a reinforced concrete frame and a rubber floor for volleyball and other sports.
The missile struck the middle of the roof, destroying a large part of the building. The main court, small spectator stands, changing rooms, and coach’s office were all reduced to rubble.
Hossein Gholami, a 50-year-old elementary school teacher, was returning from work when he heard the blast. His 16-year-old daughter, Zahra, was training in the hall.
“I noticed a strange gathering of people at the corner of the street leading to the sports hall,” Gholami told Drop Site.
“The screaming was rising from a distance. A colleague ran toward me, waving his arm, and said in a shaken voice: ‘Zahra, the hall, there has been an explosion.’
“I felt as though the ground had split beneath my feet. Everything around me became hazy,” he said. “I ran immediately, and with every step the columns of black smoke rose higher, while the smell of fire and flames entered my nose with force.”
Scene of horror
When he reached the site, he came upon a scene of horror.
“The continuous screaming of the injured mixed with the sounds of secondary explosions. The ground was covered in debris and shattered glass. It was difficult to move with all the rubble. Ambulances arrived after about twenty minutes, but most of the injured were in critical condition,” he said.
“The smell of blood and burns covered everything…the survivors were injured with fractures and burns from the shrapnel.”
Later, he learned that Zahra was among the dead.
“Every time I close my eyes I see her face, her smile, and I hear the sound of the explosion,” Gholami said.
There has been no public statement by the US or Israeli on the Lamerd strikes.
CENTCOM and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
165 killed – many schoolgirls
The bombing of the sports hall in Lamerd came hours after a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, another small city on the Persian Gulf, further east near the Strait of Hormuz, that, according to the state-run IRNA news agency, killed 165 people, many of them schoolgirls.
Neither the US nor Israel claimed that strike. The Israeli military said it was not aware of strikes in the area of Minab; CENTCOM’s spokesperson said they were “looking into” reports.
Another strike hit an adjacent IRGC naval base and the USS Abraham Lincoln is stationed nearby.
The governor of Lamerd said “The United States and the Zionist regime fired missiles at the sports hall while female students were playing inside,” according to the Fars news agency.
As of Sunday morning, the Iranian Red Crescent and state-linked media have reported preliminary casualty figures of more than 200 people killed and more than 740 injured across Iran, though the actual toll is expected to be significantly higher.
Iran launched retaliatory strikes across nine countries in the region: Israel, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with a total of 18 killed, including three US servicemen, according to a tally by Al Jazeera.
Mir Dehdasht, an administrative officer at Azad university whose 15-year-old daughter Rabab Dehdasht was training at the sports hall, was at home when a neighbour knocked on his door to tell him the facility had been attacked.
‘Their voices were deafening’
“I ran immediately toward the place, and when I arrived, I found burning cars and rubble scattered everywhere,” Dehdasht told Drop Site. “The injured were bleeding heavily, some had lost consciousness on the ground, others were screaming without stopping.
“Their voices were deafening.”
He continued: “Blood and dust covered everything, and the rubble blocked quick access to the building. Rescue teams were working with extreme care to bring out the injured athletes and the bodies of the victims.
“The screaming filled everything,” he said. “Robab did not survive the force of the explosion, while others survived but with life-threatening injuries. I felt complete helplessness.”
Farhad Za’eri, a retired Ministry of Health employee, received the news of the strike by phone. His 16-year-old daughter Elahe, was also there.
“I left immediately with some neighbors. The roads were unusually congested and there was a sense of anxiety throughout the neighborhood,” Za’eri told Drop Site. “When we arrived, the rescue teams were already there and they had begun bringing out the bodies one by one.”
“I did not know what I would see,” he continued, “but when I got close to the place where they were bringing out the victims, I felt a heaviness in my chest.
‘Mark of pain’
“Every body that was lifted carried the mark of pain, and the rescue effort was trying to distinguish between those who could still be saved and those whose lives had ended,” he said.
“There were voices from every direction, everyone was trying to understand what had happened. In that moment, everything inside me was silent, and I was waiting for them to tell me about my daughter Elahe.”
Elahe’s body was eventually brought out. “My daughter’s body was completely destroyed. It appears she was directly hit by the strike. The lower part of her body was completely destroyed,” Za’eri said.
“How can a father describe what he feels when he sees his child like this? All my memories of her, her laugh, her training, her dreams, collapsed before my eyes in a single moment.”
This articles was published first by Drop Site News in collaboration with Egab.
Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz
