Translated Content:
The Etemad newspaper wrote in a report by Nayreh Khademi: The forensic medical list of the details of the wounded and casualties of the missile attack on Lamerd states: "A fractured knee, a fractured leg, a fractured leg, a fractured side, a severed artery, spinal paralysis, blindness, and..." At 5:00 PM on March 21, the 720,000 "tungsten" fragments that were in the body of the American missiles had not yet been released over the city of Lamerd.
Zahra and Fatemeh Gholami were standing in front of the supermarket, laughing at Arsham, who was waving from behind the supermarket windows. Anita Ghasemi was running with a ball in her hand, Zahra Dehdashti was trying to prepare the iftar table with her children in the yard of her house, and Seyyed Reza Mousavi, who had just started the car, was at the door to pick up his mother, Zahra Gholami.
Each of the people mentioned has now either died or been listed as injured in the forensic medical list. More than three months have passed since those days, “Etemad” has discussed the stories and the extent of the investigations, criticisms, and complaints in interviews with some witnesses, the injured, the families of the injured and the deceased, and the director of Lamerd Hospital.
Each of the witnesses to the attack on Lamerd has their own stories of the attack on this city, but one sentence has been repeated the most: “The hospital was full of blood.” Some of them speak of repeated infections of wounds caused by contaminated and toxic shrapnel, and the director of the Haj Mahmoud Haj Haidar Lamerd Hospital also confirms that those infections were different and that, according to reports, there was also lead poisoning.
The laughter that dried up
One of the four missiles that exploded over Lamerd that evening in a 360-degree radius was right behind the supermarket that Zahra and Fatemeh Gholami were standing in front of. A minute earlier, Zahra's son Arsham had been craving something to eat, so his father parked the car right in front of it so they could buy some food. A second later, as Arsham was waving to his aunt and mother from inside the store, the missile exploded above their heads. Then there was no more sound, the missile and its explosions turned the image of laughter into tears.
Javad, the Gholami sisters' brother, had been in one of the streets of Lamerd a few minutes earlier when he heard the sounds and then saw how, in a split second, many people from Lamerd came to the streets and alleys to see what was going on. For about 10 minutes, maybe longer, all the antennas went down. Then his uncle called and told him to go to the hospital. What was going on? He didn’t know. He went to the hospital and saw horrific scenes. “It was very crowded and so many injured people had been brought in and there was so much blood that they were cleaning the blood off the hospital floor with a T-shirt.”
First, he saw the bloody body of his older sister Zahra, covered in a white cloth. He was shocked; “Could it be that the other sister is not alive?” He was thinking this when his brother pointed upstairs; “What do you mean? What’s going on here?” Javad Gholami went up the hospital stairs and after a little searching, he found his other sister with deep, bloody wounds; “The moment the first and second explosions happened, our son-in-law went inside the shop to get Arsham and they ran away, but in the middle of the way, the last explosion also happened. The shrapnel hits her leg and she falls to the ground with Arsham there. Fatemeh, who herself had been shot, realizes inside the car, “My sister Zahra is no longer moving and has been martyred.”
Zahra was 34 years old, and of course this was her birth name, but because she liked the name Sahar, everyone at home called her Sahar. She used to be a teacher and hasn’t gone to work since her child was born. She left teaching to be closer to Arsham. Now Arsham, who is still very young, sometimes talks about his mother with the same childish expressions and pronunciations, for example, saying: “My mother has been martyred.” Although he still doesn’t know what this means? Sometimes, as Javad Gholami says: “She is impatient with her mother and asks: When is my mother coming?” It is as if sometimes she sees her mother (for example, in a dream) and says: “My mother said such and such and told me to do this.”
Javad’s other sister is 24 years old, a student and single, and is still undergoing treatment for the shrapnel that hit her body. Now the family is worried that her injury will be permanent, which is why they have not limited themselves to government and special treatments for war wounded; “They have removed several of the shrapnel from her body, her intestines have been operated on, and her spinal cord has been damaged and crushed and is undergoing treatment. Due to the damage the shrapnel caused to her spinal cord, Fatima’s legs still do not feel and she is currently undergoing treatment, however, her treatment has a golden period of 6 months and if the necessary measures are not taken properly during this time, it may cause problems in the future.” He talks about the lack of facilities and that despite the efforts of the Martyrs' Foundation and the government, the facilities for the wounded in this war are still very limited; "The access is very poor and the treatment is slow.
The hospital is crowded and there are many people who are admitted for physiotherapy, so naturally the treatment is limited and the work is not done as it should be. For this reason, and in order not to miss the golden time of treatment, we took her to a private clinic. If the treatment had been done in the same hospital that the government had introduced, it would not have cost us anything, but since it is a private clinic, we will pay for it ourselves. In any case, the treatment must be such that it will have accurate and correct results for my sister.
In the first days when she was in Lamerd, of course, the clinics were closed and we had found someone who would come to our house and do physiotherapy. "Right now, the focus is on the back, so that physiotherapy can be done so that feeling can return to her legs." Physiotherapy and morale are very important, of course, in addition to the treatment that is done at home so that they can see progress. Javad's sister is transported to the office by the Martyr's Foundation ambulance, and the hotel they have provided in Shiraz is for the Martyr's Foundation, although she says that the hotel is not in good conditions and this weakens her sister's morale; "The area there is crowded, and this also reduces my sister's rest. My sister needs a good hotel. That hotel is mostly for temporary accommodation because it does not have a kitchen or a separate room, especially in a situation where, in addition to my mother and a few other family members, my aunt is also there to do some work. Other services are also needed because if the golden time is lost, no matter which country you send them to and no matter how much you spend, it will be useless.” Fatemeh Gholami is not in a very good mood these days, not only due to her physical condition and injuries, but it is also difficult for her to remember those moments of explosions of sounds and terrifying images. Her sister Zahra’s face cannot be taken out of her eyes and she is sad; “She rarely talks about those moments, for example, if you ask her a question, she changes. She and my other martyred sister were together at that moment and were laughing when the missiles exploded. At that moment, they quickly get into the car, then she sees my sister shaking, but she doesn’t move, and she herself feels sick and faints. My sister experienced these painful and terrifying scenes and will never forget them.”
Testing a new weapon in Lamerd
The Lamerd incident, however, is different in many ways from other explosions, even in Iran itself. The New York Times in April this year, in an investigative report citing image analysis and a review of verified videos, revealed that on the first day of the war, on February 28 (March 9), a new American short-range ballistic missile called PrSM hit a gym and an elementary school in the city of Lamerd in Fars Province; a missile that had not been used in any real combat operations before.
In this attack, a small town collapsed with more than two tons of ammunition over two residential neighborhoods. According to Seyyed Mousavi, a representative of the people of Lamerd in the parliament; These missiles exploded before hitting the ground at a height of about 30 to 40 meters, and for this reason there is no crater on the ground as a place of impact; “In just 35 seconds, about 720 thousand bullets landed on the heads of the people of a small town.”
The intensity of the explosions in Lamerd was such that after a hundred days, the walls of the houses and streets of the city are still riddled with holes, and in one house that has not yet been rebuilt, the impact site of more than 700 tungsten bullets is visible; “Many of the wounded still have dozens of bullets in their bodies. Some have gone blind, some have had limbs amputated, and some families are still busy treating their children. That night, Lamerd Hospital was a scene that I will never forget; Teenagers still wearing sportswear, children whose bodies were riddled with bullets, and families who were anxiously waiting for their loved ones to be rescued.” According to him, four days after the attack on Lamerd, on March 4, Centcom officially announced on its page that it had used the PrSM missile for the first time, and that this was a deliberate and planned crime against ordinary people.
Contaminated shells that cause wound infections
The weapon that was tested for the first time was not an ordinary weapon, so the wounds caused by the shell and its bullets are not ordinary, and as some relatives of the injured say, the wounds have become infected several times during these two to three months due to the contamination of the shells.
Javad Gholami, of course, believes that his sister was spared from serious infection because they had taken very serious and special care, but his young aunt's daughter-in-law, whose leg was hit by a bullet, had this experience. Zahra Gholami, whose house is opposite Lamerd Stadium, was waiting at home on the evening of the 9th for her son Seyyed Reza Mousavi to arrive by car so they could go somewhere together, but as soon as her son arrived, the missiles exploded above their heads.
The bullets hit Seyyed Reza Mousavi, who was 18 years old, in the head and killed him on the spot. At the same time, the bullet also hit Zahra Gholami, Seyyed Reza Mousavi's mother, in the knee. An injury that has caused Zahra Khanum's leg to become infected several times; “In those first days and weeks, we were in very bad conditions with the events that happened, and we really didn’t know anyone, but we realized that my aunt’s daughter-in-law’s foot had become infected several times, and then they realized it was due to the toxic and strange shrapnel.”
Leila Behzadi, advisor to the governor of Lamerd, also confirms this and tells “Etemad” that she has seen these conditions among the wounded and has heard stories about it. According to her, the mother of one of the martyrs also confirmed the infection in the injury of one of her daughters and even said that she heard that samples of the shrapnel were sent to the Isfahan laboratory to determine what substance, virus or fungus, the body of the shrapnel was contaminated with; “One of the hospital medical staff members said that some of the wounded had suffered severe injuries but did not feel any pain from those injuries, or that their infections were suspicious infections that were different from the usual infections. "The matter is still under investigation, of course, and no definitive conclusions have been reached about it." She talks about another 10-year-old child named Anita Ghasemi, who is suffering from this issue and has experienced an infection.
At that moment, Anita Ghasemi was sitting in the middle of the volleyball hall of Lamerd Stadium, holding the ball in her hand, looking at the coach's mouth to learn new sports moves and related points from her. Suddenly, the ground shook, and everyone got up from the ground with these tremors; "The sound was loud and the others were screaming so much that I told myself that my ears were going deaf now. I didn't think there would be a fight, but I started screaming with the others."
The door to the hall was closed with the sound and wave of the explosion, and all the girls were clinging to the door until the boys' soccer coach of the stadium came to their aid and opened the door; “I think Shahid Najafi opened the door and we went out.” Anita was also shocked when she suddenly remembered that she hadn’t taken her bag, so she turned to the hall to take it, but as soon as she reached the hall door, they knocked on the door again.
This time, she didn’t feel much shaking or noise, and she was just thrown forward. She doesn’t remember much from then on, except for seeing her friend get into the car or a woman who seemed to have picked her up; “I couldn’t sit down at all and I was lying down when someone in a military uniform came, picked me up and took me into the car. The car was full of people who had left. We went to the hospital. I was lying in the hospital hall and no one was above me at the time I was there and my mother wasn’t above me, it was very difficult.”
Anita loves volleyball and had started volleyball classes about 8 months ago. Classes are currently closed, and of course, she won’t be able to play for a few months due to her injuries, but when she gets better, she definitely wants to continue. Marzieh Mir, Anita’s mother, took the time to find Anita in the hospital on her first day. Her little girl was lying on a chair in the hospital hall, and a woman was praying over her head. Her pelvic wound was bleeding profusely, but Anita was shocked and just watched; “At midnight, they said the fracture had caused a large tear and needed surgery. My daughter was in the operating room for two hours, and when they brought her out, her stomach was open. They said we can’t operate, you have to take her to Shiraz.”
At around 4 a.m., Anita was taken to Shiraz by ambulance in an unconscious state with her stomach open, and she underwent treatment for two or three days; For example, while she was under anesthesia, they changed the bandages because the splinter had burned and torn the tissue. After two or three days, things got a little better, and they were able to sew up her abdomen with about 25 stitches; “They took out her large intestine to prevent infection, and it’s been in a bag ever since, so that the tissues under her abdomen can heal.”
While there’s still another operation to collect Anita’s intestines and perhaps more operations to come, her mother says that now, three months later, the splinter site is itchy and numb, but her daughter has also had infections before; “One splinter went into her thigh and one into the back of her finger, and it was as if she was poisoned, and Anita had lost her appetite. She had been without food for about two months, wouldn’t eat any food we gave her, and if she did, she would throw up. She hadn’t eaten enough that she was skin and bones. I just gave him fluids and I feel like that’s why he passed out. They said it was because the splinter was contaminated with phosphorus. Of course, thank God the infection went away and now his appetite is better. He was in the ICU for two weeks at first and they were very careful there to make sure the wounds didn’t get infected. At home, I was very careful and kept washing the wound with my head and changing the bandages.”
Of course, he himself went to the gym two months after the explosion and held one of the bullets in his hand, and his hand started burning, so he somehow intuitively knew that there was something in the splinters; “The bullets were the size of peas but they were very heavy. After I held one of them, I felt my hand burn, then I washed my hand and after half an hour it felt better.”
It has been very difficult for them during this time. For example, they have all thought about those bloody scenes and lifeless bodies in the hospital many times. The thought of loss has filled their minds many times, and now that the mother talks about it, she feels resentful; "It was a bad thing that happened and is over and gone. Now that things are getting better and I tell Anita not to think too much, but the wounds that were created and the pain were like shock. Now that she is recovering, I had a strange emotional state during those two months. Sometimes I didn't even notice when someone greeted me. She also suffered a lot and cried. They gave her a lot of sedatives in the ICU and maybe she didn't understand the pain very much, but when we were at home, she sometimes suffered a lot and cried. Her doctor also said that we had given her the maximum amount of painkillers and medications and that she had to endure it. We were awake from night to morning and he endured high fevers.
Mohammad Javad Sajjadi, the head of Haj Mahmoud Haj Haidar Lamerd Hospital, as one of the experts who closely monitored this issue, confirmed in an interview with “Etemad” that several of the injured from the missile attack were returning to the hospital with severe infections at the same time and were even hospitalized for several days; “One of the patients was hospitalized for 30 days. Of course, they came with these infections, but I am not aware of any tests being conducted on them to know exactly what the cause was, but the site of the impact had caused severe infections. In any case, if the site of impact was related to a Kalash bullet, the probability of infection is much lower.”
According to him, the infections were different; “We were told it was from lead and there was also lead poisoning. "Of course, wound infection eventually occurs, and it may also occur with other weapons of war, but in this case, it was more severe. After all, it was a terrorist weapon intended for assassination and mass murder that was used in a residential area." He was in the hospital from the very first minutes of the missile attack on Lamerd and saw with his own eyes how within one to two minutes the hospital grounds were filled with the wounded and those who had previously lost their lives due to the severity of their injuries. About 32 surgeries were performed in the same hospital, but due to the high number of referrals and perhaps the lack of facilities, they were forced to refer several patients to Shiraz, including Anita Ghasemi.
On March 29, the Israeli and American attack on Iran was launched with the sound of a massive explosion in central Tehran, and it almost caused a disaster in Minab. While no one thought about it, one of the strangest American weapons of mass destruction was tested in a 360-degree radius above the heads of the people of Lamerd. Four missiles targeted four points in the city of 30,000 Lamerd in less than 35 seconds, killing 21 civilians, including 5 children, and injuring more than 130 people, many of whom were permanently disabled.
The Haj Mahmoud Haj Heydar Lamerd Hospital was in a state of chaos that day, so much so that Anita Ghasemi's mother described the atmosphere and conditions as follows: "All the corridors and rooms were full of wounded people. The hospital smelled of blood, the hospital floor was covered in blood, and you felt like you were walking on blood."
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