Shortly after 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 28, 2026, at least 21 people, including at least seven children and two women, were killed and up to 170 others injured in a series of three to four strikes allegedly carried out by the U.S. and/or Israeli military on Shahid Naimi sports hall, two residential buildings, and a school in the southern city of Lamerd, located in the Fars Province of southern Iran. According to local sources, the residential complex Shahrak Isar and the neighborhood Talkhandagh (Talkhandeq) were hit by the strikes. Multiple media outlets including the BBC and the New York Times linked images of the munition captured in the strike to the United States, with various experts ruling out any other possible party to the conflict. This was denied by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
10-year-old Helma Ahmadizadeh, 11 to 16-year-old Elham/Elahe Zaeri, 12-year-old Ilia Hatami, a teenager named Abdul Mosavar Rahmani, a footballer named Alireza Abbasi, and a sports coach named Mahmoud (Muhammad) Najafi were killed in the sports hall and adjacent football field. In nearby locations, two-year-old Avina Barzegar, 46-year-old engineer Hamid Amini, female radiologist Rubab Dehdashti, Masoumeh Monfared and her son, Abedin Gharibdoost, as well as Siavash Shahbazi, Jafar Hatami, Hossein Ebrahimi, Rahman Mansouri, Reza Mousavi, Sakineh Shabani, Zahra Asadinejad, Abuzar Amiri, Farhad Najafi, and 16-year-old Zahra Gholami, were killed. The list was initially published by Tasnim, and was later verified by the New York Times. Airwars also found additional reporting of the names among open sources.
While most of the sources, including Mr. Iravani, Iran’s representative to the U.N., reported that around 100 civilians had been injured, a report for Iranian Channel 7 (Education Network) stated that 130 people had been injured. According to the head of the Lamerd Health Network who spoke on the day of attack, nearly 100 people had been injured in the attacks, of which 77 had been hospitalized in the Lamerd State Hospital as of the time of reporting.
A documentary shared on Telegram by @majaraa_media featuring reporting from the location of the attack 90 days afterwards provided an injury toll of 170 or 180 (also mentioning 160 or 170, so this has been quantified as 170 as that number was consistently mentioned). According to @Nournews_ir on Telegram, 32 of the injured people underwent surgery, and a total of about 40 surgeries were performed on the injured in this airstrike (indicating that some casualties underwent multiple surgeries).
Drop Site News spoke with Mir Dehdasht, an employee of Azad University who said that his 15-year-old daughter Rabab/Robab Dehdasht was training in the sports hall when the attack happened. While Rabab’s full name is nearly identical to victim Rubab listed above, their age and the details of their death are completely different. Therefore, both names have been listed separately in the civilian casualty list but have only been counted in the maximum civilian death toll to account for duplication.
Dehdasht described hearing about the strike, “I ran immediately toward the place, and when I arrived, I found burning cars and rubble scattered everywhere. The injured were bleeding heavily, some had lost consciousness on the ground, others were screaming without stopping. Their voices were deafening. 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. Robab did not survive the force of the explosion, while others survived but with life-threatening injuries. I felt complete helplessness.”
On the day of the attack, Fars News Agency, AkharinKhabar, and other outlets reported that according to the “Governor of Lamerd, this city was attacked by four missiles…one of which hit the sports hall and two missiles hit residential areas. The total number of martyrs so far is 17 and nearly 100 people were injured, and we expect the number of martyrs to increase.”
On Telegram, Khabarfoori news agency (@akhbarefori) posted that “at the time of the attack, children were playing and exercising in this [sports] hall.” Fars News Agency (@farsna) also posted on Telegram, reporting that one missile had hit a “sports hall where female students were playing, two missiles hit residential houses and a projectile hit a school.”
According to a March 2 report by Student News Network (SNN), “this cowardly attack…resulted in the martyrdom of 21 innocent citizens, including children, teenagers, young people and the elderly. At the epicenter of this crime, the missile strike on a sports hall led to the martyrdom of two girls, two teenage boys and their coach. In addition, 16 other innocent residents of the town were martyred, either in their private homes or while walking on the street.” It went on to explain that “the age range of the martyrs of the incident ranges from a two-year-old child to the elderly.” SNN later revised their death toll to 23 killed while reporting on a commemorative ceremony a few months later, on April 28.
According to a reporter of Fars News who traveled to Lamerd and spoke to a local resident Ismail, the explosions of at least three missiles were recorded within 31 seconds based on CCTV timestamps: the first explosion in Shahrak Isar at 17:37:46; the second in the Talkhandagh (Talkhandeq) neighborhood at 17:37:56; and the third at 17:38:17 at the sports hall. According to Ismail, he checked the CCTV camera time to ascertain the exact time of the explosions.
A report for Channel 7 stated that four missiles were used – with three hitting residential buildings, and one – the sports hall. In its documentary, shared to Telegram on June 8, @majaraa_media reported, while on-location in Lamerd, that "On the first day of the war, at 5:10 p.m., four missiles struck this area," specifying that "The first missile struck here. This is a residential complex, behind the nursing school. The second missile struck over there, behind those trees, also in the middle of the houses. The third missile struck this same residential complex again. The fourth missile hit this sports facility. Do you see those slides? That is the school. Behind the school is a Basij building.”
On June 18, 2026, Shargh Daily published an article titled 'Lamerd at 5:12 p.m.: Drenched in Blood,' which was based on "seven hours of conversations with families, children, and the doctor on shift [at the time of the attack]" recounting their memories from that tragic day. Per its title, the piece claimed that at least one of the strikes took place at 5:12 p.m. According to the father of one of the children injured in the strike who was interviewed for the piece, "It was past 5:00 p.m. I went to the roof of the house and saw that four missiles hit the city within five or six seconds. The distance from our house to the stadium is two kilometers. I came back into the house and told [my family] that they had hit near the IRGC."
Mohammed Saed Khorshedy, a 29-year-old employee of the sports facility who witnessed the attack, told Drop Site News that “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. 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.” According to Drop Site, the sports hall was described as “poorly maintained” and composed of a metal roof, a concrete frame, and a rubber floor for volleyball and other athletics. The missile reportedly hit the middle of the roof, reducing the main court, small spectator stands, changing rooms, and coach’s office to rubble.
The strikes were also described in detail by an Iranian journalist and women’s rights activist based in Tehran, Negin Bagheri. She wrote on her Twitter/X account that the girls of the local Noonhalan volleyball team were training in a sports center as the first explosion happened: “With the sound of the first explosion at a base near them, the power to the gym was cut off. Everyone, wherever they were, was trying to find the exit in the darkness. But the second missile did not give them time to evacuate. How could they get out of a 50-meter-long gym in 10 seconds?”
Bagheri went on to describe how the second explosion hit the sports hall: “While the kids were running away, the second rocket did not reach the base and exploded right above the club. Its shrapnel tore through the ceiling and came towards the Noonhalan Lamerd volleyball team in Fars Province. Then, the third rocket hit the Lamerd beltway about 200 meters ahead of the sports hall, in front of the citizens’ living quarters, killing 21 people.”
Attack on the sports hall and football field
The attack on the sports hall and the adjacent football field took the lives of three teenage girls (10-year-old Helma Ahmadizadeh, 16-year-old Zahra Gholami, and 11-year-old Elham Zaeri), two teenage boys (12-year-old Ilia Hatami and Abdul Mosavar Rahmani who was reported to be of Afghan origin), their coach Mahmoud Najafi, and a football player named Alireza Abbasi, according to reports by numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, Student News Agency and Truthout.
Hours after the incident, @akhbarefori reported that “a sports teacher was martyred today…in the brutal attack by the child-killing regime of Israel and the criminal America on a gym in Lamerd” and shared a charming photo of a young man wearing an athletic shirt and sunglasses.
On March 1, @Nournews_ir reported that “Helma Ahmadizadeh, a fifth-grade female student at the elementary school “Khadija Kobra Absholi”, Elham Zaeri, a fifth-grade female student at Shahid Ameri Elementary School, and Ilia Hatami, a sixth-grade male student at the non-governmental Sama Elementary School, are among the student martyrs of this crime. Also in this cowardly attack, Mr. Mahmoud Najafi, the sports director of Hazrat Zahra Elementary School in this city was also martyred.” The post included photos of two children and another picture of a smiling man who appeared to be leading a physical education class. In its coverage from the funeral of many of the victims, ILNA published a photo of a crying woman holding Elham Zaeri’s smiling portrait, and another of a young girl holding a portrait of Helma Ahmadizadeh.
Helma and Elham were killed in the sports hall, where a team of 26 girls were participating in volleyball practice according to the report of Khabar Online. Negin Bagheri was the first to report the girls' deaths. She interviewed Helma’s uncle, who said that Helma had survived the initial explosion and walked into the ambulance herself, without visible injuries, telling her coach, “It feels like something went into my body.” Around 7:00 p.m., she died in the hospital due to a piece of shrapnel that pierced her heart.
In a painful interview with Shargh Daily, Helma's mother recounted her daughter's passing in detail. She explained that "The hospital is very close to the [sports] club; we got there in less than a minute. When I entered the hospital, [...] Helma was lying on the floor in the corridor, and around eight people were gathered over her. They were resuscitating her. Her eyes were open. They were open completely normally. I was screaming, "Helma, Helma." Her body was warm. I kept saying, "bring her back to me. She is alive, she is alive." I was just screaming, and the nurses and doctors were busy. The hospital was not prepared at all for such an incident. They were resuscitating Helma on the floor, not on a bed or a chair [...] At the [sports] club, we had been told that Helma had walked to the hospital herself, and when I looked at her appearance I could not see any sign of bleeding. They had taken off her clothes; she was wearing a sports crop top. There was a small black object on her chest. That was all. We saw no blood, no wound [...] [Shrapnel] had gone into her chest. Into her heart valve. It was so tiny that it could not be seen at all. Nothing was visible on her clothes. But the cause of death was announced as bleeding. Later, when we asked around, we were told that inside the [sports] hall they had asked her, "are you okay?" She had said "yes. My chest just burns." She herself had told the coach, go and help the others."
Khabar Online told the story of the second victim, Elham. According to the media outlet, Elham’s brother arrived before the ambulance, found Elham among the girls, and put her in the car with bloody hands and feet. Doctors said that she had died shortly before reaching the hospital. Elham’s father said that his daughter “had many dreams of becoming a volleyball player. With her height and build, she could answer the serves of her older brothers and amaze them.” He also described Elham to BBC as “an avid volleyball player, who would always turn up to the sports hall 20 to 25 minutes early.” According to a local resident named Ismail who spoke to Fars News, Elham was also a ta’ziyeh reciter. For two years, together with her father, she had been reciting the ta’ziyeh of Sakine.
Speaking with Shargh Daily a few months later, Elham's mother described the events of February 28 in detail, explaining that their family was heartbroken by the news of the school bombing in Minab earlier that day, and that Elham had decided to attend volleyball practice later that afternoon. Then, she said, "suddenly there was the sound of a very large explosion. My husband went into the yard and shouted, ‘Oh no, they hit Lamerd.’ Then the second and third sounds came, and it was as if a breeze hit our faces. It was the blast wave. We looked from above and saw smoke coming from the direction of the sports hall. My husband shouted, ‘They hit the hall.’ He kept shouting and crying out." When they finally reached Elham, "the flesh on her back had been torn to shreds. I thought those pieces of flesh belonged to the body of one of the other children and had been splashed onto my daughter. But they were hers. The shrapnel had entered her body; it had gone in from one side and come out from the other. There was a large hole in my daughter’s back. Her back and abdomen had been hit by shrapnel. Bleeding took her life."
According to Shargh Daily, Elham's "mother had an intense attachment to her daughter. She had given birth to her after a gap from her two sons, and when they told her it was a girl, the world was hers [...] The mother had a difficult pregnancy. She spent many days in bed. Breastfeeding was difficult. She says: “May it have been good for her. May everything I did for her be accepted. I loved her so much that I would put her socks on her feet myself. I would not let her lift a finger.” The mother wants to speak for hours about her daughter: “Elham loved the voice of Hami, the singer. She had made many dubsmashes with his voice. Her dream was to grow up faster and go to a Hami concert. She read the Shahnameh. She was good at volleyball and wanted to take part in provincial and national competitions.”"
Drop Site News spoke with 50-year-old Hossein Gholami, an elementary school teacher and father of Zahra Gholami, who said he was coming back from work when he heard the blast and “noticed a strange gathering of people at the corner of the street leading to the sports hall. 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. 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.”
Mr. Gholami also described the horror he witnessed at the site of the attack, saying “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. The smell of blood and burns covered everything…the survivors were injured with fractures and burns from the shrapnel.” Mr. Gholami further expressed the pain of losing his daughter, saying “Every time I close my eyes I see her face, her smile, and I hear the sound of the explosion.”
Local sources reported that Elham Zaeri ( الهام زائری) was among those killed and recorded her age as 11 years old. However, an article from Drop Site news includes an interview with Farhad Za’eri, a retired Ministry of Health Employee, who spoke about his 16-year-old daughter Elahe Zaeri who was killed. Airwars has documented these reports as referring to one person, recording the killing of 16-year-old Elham Zaeri, with the assumption that the transliterated name used in the English-language Drop Site article was reasonably different than that transliterated by Airwars from Persian-language sources. This will be updated should additional information become available.
Za’eri told Drop Site News that when he received a call telling him about the strike, “I left immediately with some neighbors. The roads were unusually congested and there was a sense of anxiety throughout the neighborhood. 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 but when I got close to the place where they were bringing out the victims, I felt a heaviness in my chest. 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. 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.”
Za’eri eventually found out that his daughter was among the victims. Describing finally finding his daughter’s body, Za’eri said: “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. 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.”
Mina Ghorbani posted on Twitter/X a message they received from Elham’s mother, who said that: “My daughter was an energetic girl full of hope for the future. Active in the field of art and sports. Painter. Designer. She used to write poetry….She was a great reader of the Shahnameh. She was very fond of books and reading. She was a professional skater. She was a professional volleyball player. She was a lively girl with strong public relations. What was this child’s sin? In the gym where she always went to exercise with love.” In images, she can be seen posing in different locations with fashionable outfits smiling.
Fars News also quoted that Ms. Shahabi, a volleyball teacher at the girls’ sports hall, who told the media: “When I heard the first explosion, I gathered everyone in the east door of the hall. Elham Zaeri and Helma Ahmadizadeh were going to the other door of the hall to pick up their belongings, and at that moment the door on that side slammed shut, and these two girls were martyred.” According to the report by Khabar Online, the coach and her assistant were also injured: “The head and back of the coach’s hand were shattered, and the skin on the throat and side of the assistant coach’s neck was torn.”
According to the same report, the two girls, Helma and Elham were supposed to have their birthdays soon: “Helma Sadat Ahmadizadeh, a fourth-grader, was supposed to blow out the candles on her cake in ten days. Elham Zaeri, a fifth-grader, was due to have her birthday a month later.”
On the adjacent football field, sports coach Mahmoud Najafi, 12-year-old Ilia (Ilya) Hatami, an Afghan teenage boy named Abdul Mosavar Rahmani, and another young man described as a footballer were killed. The name of this young man was Alireza Abbasi, according to Moj News Agency.
Ilia’s father spoke to IRNA about his late son: “Ilia was my best friend and I loved him very much; he was my constant companion in football, travel, and recreation; I took him with me to my workplace at the Asaluyeh Refinery several times, and my colleagues had become so close to him in that short time that they had become friends with Ilia before they were friends with me.” He added: “I realized that Ilia wanted to surprise me with the help of these same colleagues for March 10, which is my birthday.” Ilia’s father also told the media outlet that a missile first hit the surrounding houses, causing children and teenagers who were playing on the volleyball and football fields of the sports complex to run towards the exit in panic; but two consecutive missiles fired at the complex “did not give these children any time, leaving four bloody marks on the stadium field.” In an image attached to the report, Ilia, wearing a school uniform, is holding up a yellow sign with Persian text saying “Happy World Children’s Day.”
In an interview with Shargh Daily, Ilia's father mentioned that his late son "wanted to become a footballer. He had been going to football class for five or six years. He loved Cristiano Ronaldo. Once he told me, Dad, do you know why Ronaldo has no tattoos on his body? I said, why? He said, because he wants to donate blood. That was why he had been drawn to him. Ilia was a fan of Esteghlal. He liked Alireza Koushki’s style of play. He said, I want to become the best player at Farhangian Club and a member of Esteghlal’s team. He also played the santur. It is such a pity.”
According to Ilia’s father, the teenager had a 10-year-old sister, who was suffering a lot because of his death. Shargh Daily reported that "Elsana, Ilia’s sister, was waiting in the car for her father, mother, and brother when the father went and told her the news that her brother had been killed." She told the outlet that Ilia "had been hit by shrapnel in the back of the head. He had bled so much that when I put my face on his face, my face became bloody." Despite this horrific experience, the little girl told Shargh Daily that she has not received any psychological support, saying "Nothing has been done. And it is truly needed."
A reporter with @majaraa_media spoke with a boy who survived the attack on the field but was injured, and who said that “We came to the soccer field. My friend and I ran toward the shade canopy…When our coach reached us, he quickly motioned for us to come outside. He said it was dangerous there. We came out. When I got here, the blast wave struck my hand, and I was moving farther back. Then a fragment struck me in the throat. I quickly went behind the water cooler. When the explosions stopped, I went over there to Abdolmasour. He was lying here. He had been struck in the lower back. Then he kept telling me, “Help me, help me . . .” Ilia was lying here. A fragment had entered through his forehead and exited through the back of his head.”
Sohrab Sharifi, a general surgeon at Haj Mahmoud Haj Heydar Hospital who treated many victims of the the attack, emphasized the unique and complicated nature of the injuries caused by the strike, and the prevalence of infections suffered by many of his patients. He said "One of these children was Abdolmossavver Rahmani, an Afghan child who had been hit by shrapnel in the back of his neck. No matter what antibiotics we injected into him, it was useless. Anything you can imagine. He had a fever and did not respond to any medication. We gave antipyretics; it was useless. We gave anti-infection medication; it was useless. I did everything I could so that this child would not be lost, but it had no result." According to volleyball coach Rahimeh Shahabi, after his death, Abdolmossavver "was taken to Afghanistan at his grandmother’s insistence, so that he could be buried there beside his loved ones, in his homeland."
Speaking with Shargh Daily, Zeinab, the surviving wife of 37-year-old football coach Mahmoud Najafi said her husband was killed on his birthday, leaving her and their nine-year-old son Amirhesam behind. She and Mahmoud "were university classmates. They had studied physical education and had married 15 years ago." According to the article, "Zeinab knows the exact time of the explosion: 17:12. Amirhesam had gone to the club with his father that day. At that hour, the session was for children aged nine to 11. Thirty-eight students were present in the class. Mahmoud was fasting, and Amirhesam was bothering him; he had decided to send him home." When she heard news of the explosion and subsequently learned that Mahmoud had been killed, Zeinab said "I could not believe it. I was screaming and crying. Then they took me to the morgue. I saw him there. Above his right eyebrow was bruised. I touched his face; there was a smile on it. His shoulders were bruised. The shrapnel had pierced his lungs; it had also hit his side and upper chest. But I did not see blood on his body. His face looked like someone who had suffered pain." In the aftermath of her husband's death, Zeinab said" “I keep dreaming of Mahmoud. My nine-year-old son, Mahmoud, and I were always together. Now we have been separated.”
According to reports, between 13 and 15 people were injured there and transferred to hospital.
Negin Bagheri reported via Twitter/X that 10 girls who were training in the hall underwent surgery that night. One of them had a finger amputated. Three were sent to Shiraz by emergency services. Speaking to Shargh Daily, volleyball coach Rahimeh Shahabi named five girls from the volleyball team who were wounded: Aysa Safari, Nahal Vaseghi, Anita Ghasemi, Zeinab Malekfar, and Sara Tork Laleh-Bagh.
Young football players Mir Salar Khosravi, Diako Tarafdar and Amirmohammad Forouzan were also named by sources as several of the injured.
In later interviews, the parents of many injured victims described how their children had suffered terrible infections and health complications due to the type of munitions used in the strikes.
A Twitter/X post by Mina Ghorbani named Mir Salar Khosravi as one of the children injured and included a video of the boy attempting to walk with the help of a walker during his recovery. Another post by the source said, "I watched the video of this kid walking with a walker a hundred times. When you see a picture of a wound that deep, you understand what a great thing this kid is doing now, three months later, he can walk just a few steps. Oh my goodness I had not thought about the fate of war wounded, especially children."
According to Sharg Daily, Mir Salar had a very complicated recovery process due to persistent infections. Speaking with the news outlet, his father, Abdolsamad Khosravi, said “They kept him in the ICU for a week. Every day they allowed us to see him for half an hour. He was unconscious for a week. For two months after that, he kept going back to the operating room. They scraped the wounds on his leg. They grafted the blood vessels. The tissue in part of the leg was completely necrotic, and the flesh had turned black. Every time he went to the operating room, they scraped away part of the dead tissue. They washed his leg three times a day. Every night they gave him morphine and strong antibiotics. His mental state was shattered. He was confused and dazed, with low consciousness. Every time they washed his leg, I would put my hand inside his mouth so that he could bite my hand and his teeth would not be damaged. After two months, they carried out a skin graft from his left leg. He is supposed to undergo a bone graft so that the heel can be repaired.”
Abdolsamad also told Shargh Daily about some of the financial and bureaucratic challenges that his family had encountered while trying to obtain proper treatment for Mir Salar, saying that “For the expenses, no one told us that we had to go to the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs and take documents. We took documents, and they said a medical commission had to be formed and that it would take five or six months to reach a result. Then they told us that Day Insurance is for the Foundation of Martyrs and has nothing to do with the percentage of disability. It provides coverage immediately, and we went there. Many of those who were wounded still do not know this. During this period, we have spent a lot of money. A physiotherapist comes to the house every day. We spent almost 40 million, of which 16 million was returned to us. Mirsalar needs a private nurse to wash the wound. Each session is almost 1.5 million tomans. He needs artificial skin and special injections and so on. They have not paid for these.” According to the article, "He has one serious demand and wants it to be reported in the media: international legal follow-up. “Based on the Leader’s statements, the damages and blood money of the war-wounded must be taken from the enemy. We ask the Islamic Republic to pursue the rights of the families and their children in the international community, according to the norms of international law. Under international law and in an international court, this issue must be pursued as a war crime. No one is talking about this.""
11-year-old volleyball player, Sara Tork Laleh-Bagh, lost her finger in the strike and "the main artery of her right leg was damaged." According to Shargh Daily, "At the moment of the missile strike, Sara’s mobile phone was in her right hand, and the shrapnel hit that same hand. The phone burned completely and cut off her index finger."
10-year-old Anita Ghasemi was also injured at the sports hall. Speaking to Shargh Daily, Anita's mother explained that on the day of the attack, her daughter's pet duck had unexpectedly died, leaving the little girl heartbroken. "She insisted on going [to the sports hall], perhaps so that the grief of losing her duck would ease. She wrapped the duck in a cloth so that when she returned she could bury it. She had cried so much that her eyes were red." When the sports hall was struck, "shrapnel hit her lower abdomen, causing serious damage to her lower organs and creating a two-centimeter hole. She received around 28 stitches and has gone through a very critical condition."
Much like Mir Salar's father, Anita's mother highlighted the serious infections that her child had dealt with as a result of the bombing, explaining that "The shrapnel pieces were the size of a pea and could be seen inside her body. Later, these same pieces of shrapnel became the source of infection for some of the wounded; for example, one or two months later. Apparently, they were contaminated with toxins that would become apparent after some time. There is still shrapnel inside Anita’s thigh, but they have not removed it. She keeps saying it itches. Sometimes the area around it turns red [...] The shrapnel pieces were hot and caused burns to her tissue. She was hospitalized in the ICU for a while, to the point that we could not visit her at all because they said there was a risk of infection. Her abdomen was open, and even now her rectum is externalized. The tissue has to be repaired so that they can return the intestine. Her treatment is still ongoing.” In addition, Anita had to have a catheter and stoma and experienced severe damage to her leg.
Thankfully, 11-year-old Diako Tarafdar's physical injuries appear to have been less serious. According to Shargh Daily, the young football player was hit by several pieces of shrapnel in the chest an elsewhere, but did not seem to face lasting challenges such as infections. Nevertheless, his parents indicated that he still has lasting traumatic memories and anxiety from the attack.
11-year-old Amirmohammad Forouzan was injured while practicing on the football pitch. According to Shargh Daily, "The muscle of his right shoulder above the chest, along with the calf of his right leg, was hit by shrapnel."
The outlet reported that "Amirmohammad was wounded in several places. In addition to his upper body, a piece of shrapnel hit his right leg and exited from the side. His father says flesh the size of the sole of his foot was removed, and that it severed the blood vessels, nerves, and tendons. This critical condition led to Amirmohammad being transferred to Namazi Hospital in Shiraz. In Lamerd, doctors were only able to close the main arteries so that he could be transferred to Shiraz. There, the family was told that if he remained in that state, his leg would have to be amputated within three or four hours. In the ambulance, alongside Amirmohammad, were Mir Salar Khosravi, another child named Amirhossein, and several others. Amirhossein’s mother had been killed under the missile strike, and his two sisters had been hit by shrapnel. He was a six-year-old child. Another person was with them, a man named Mr. Akbarnejad, who had also been wounded from below the pelvis and in the right leg, and they later learned that he had undergone an amputation. This group was transferred on the first night. After them, there were other groups, some of whom were killed. According to the father, 17 people were killed in the first moments, and later the number rose to 21. They were those who died after being transferred to the hospital and during the course of treatment. More than 50 people were also wounded."
Much like some of the other parents of injured children, Amirmohammad's father claimed "the shrapnel from the fired missiles was contaminated," saying that “My son was hospitalized again almost 24 days after the explosion. This time, he had an infection. Before that, he had gone to the operating room twice, and they had scraped away the upper layers of flesh on his leg that had become infected. The infection in his body would not clear even with the strongest antibiotics. Four to five centimetres of layers of flesh had been removed. We have even heard that among the wounded, two people had amputations, caused by infection after being hit by shrapnel.” According to Shargh Daily, Amirmohammad and his family "have returned to Lamerd to continue treatment, and every day his wound is washed and dressed. But despite all the care, the wound became infected, and according to his father, brown infection the size of a tennis ball came out of his leg. No one had ever seen anything like it. All of these treatments were accompanied by Amirmohammad’s screams and cries because he was in so much pain [...] During this period, they have been under immense psychological pressure."
Speaking with Shargh Daily, Amirmohammad's father described the nature of the strike and munitions used in great detail, saying that "When the sound of the missile came, at first we thought there had been an earthquake. I did not realize it was a missile strike. My wife is in charge of one of the sections of the city hospital, and then we thought perhaps they had hit the hospital. At the same time, the next three missiles were fired. It may have taken less than 35 seconds. When I saw the missile smoke, I said: ‘Oh no, they hit the hall.’ Because the smoke was on the side of the hall; it was brown. The missiles exploded over the buildings.” The area struck by the missiles is full of pellets; everything has been pierced. Cars, buildings, roofs. Bodies. One of the cars was parked around 800 metres away from the area, but the shrapnel had reached its roof and riddled it with holes. Some pieces of shrapnel passed through the car roof, exited through the floor, and reached the asphalt: With this level of force, what did it do to people’s bodies?"
Attack on residential area
In addition, at least 16 other innocent residents of the town were killed, either in their homes or while walking on the streets, as reported by the Student News Agency, Negin Bagheri and other sources.
According to Shargh Daily, "The neighborhood hit by the missiles is called Shahrak Isar. Across from it is the nursing university; to the right is the city council hall, then the post office and a blood transfusion center. There is also a university and a dental clinic in the same area. Behind these buildings there is a language institute, a kindergarten, and a girls’ primary school. Above this complex is the residential neighborhood, which has shops and is a residential area. One of the missiles hit that side. One of the residents of those houses was a nurse on whose home the missile fell and who was killed. Of these four missiles, three struck the residential area, one of them hitting Shahid Naeimi Sports Hall and football pitch. They saw the missiles explode in the sky."
The youngest victim of the deadly attack, a two-year-old girl, Avina Barzegar, was killed in the yard of her home while playing. Videos shared on social media showed her being treated in a hospital, but she later succumbed to her injuries. According to @majaraa_media, Avina was treated by Dr. Mousavi, the city’s representative in parliament, who is also a surgeon and operated on her for three or four hours but couldn’t save her from the fragment which struck her in the side and the other which struck her in the chest. An emotional video shared by Fars News showed a funeral procession for Avina, with a teddy bear placed on a coffin with her small body, wrapped in an Iranian flag. The video showed also a grieving mother of Avina and other relatives.
Among the victims was Rabab Dehdashti, a radiology expert at Haj Mahmoud Haj Haidar Hospital in Lamerd County. On March 4, @nournews_ir announced her death as a result of “the missile attacks of the United States and the [Israeli] regime.” Rubab Dehdashti was reportedly killed in the yard of her home in Talkhandeq, while her daughter (surname Qasemi, from her father’s side, a child) was injured. According to a local resident Ismail who spoke to Fars News, Rubab was reading the Quran with her little daughter when a splinter hit her and she was killed. This happened before Iftar in the month of Ramadan.
A report for Iranian Channel 7 claimed that Rabab’s husband, Mr. Mehdi Qasemi, also worked in the radiology department. He reportedly saw his wife’s body in the hospital emergency ward. Their daughter was also injured, lying on a stretcher beside her. According to the report, “Mr. Qasemi did not cry out or lament; he stood until morning in the radiology department—his workplace—serving the wounded.”
The death of Rabab was mourned by Dr. Seyed Basir Hashemi, President of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, who wrote: “The respected radiology expert at Haj Mahmoud Haj Heydar Hospital, whose continued blessed path of services in the field of health in Iran, found eternal meaning with the grace of martyrdom and left a lasting name in the history of health in the province.” He added an image of a woman in a white medical uniform and a black hijab, standing in front of a computer.
A housewife Masoumeh Monfared was killed while smoking a hookah in front of her house, alongside her son, Abedin Gharibdoost, in Shahrak Isar (an image of the site of their killing, where a condolence banner has been hanged in their memory, was shared by the local sources). According to Ismail who spoke to Fars News, “The people of Lamerd usually sit at the door of their houses near sunset. Abedin also came to see his mother – Martyr Manfared – who was martyred here.”
Negin Bagheri, writing about Masoumeh, also lamented: “Of the housewife who, according to southern customs, was sitting at home with her hookah at that moment, now one name remains on the list of Lamerd martyrs.” A reporter for @majaraa_media went to their home, pointing out that the building alone had been stuck by 200 to 300 fragments.
A young woman, Zahra Asadinejad, was also reportedly sitting in front of her house in the same neighborhood when she was killed.
Ismail told further Fars News that a young man Reza Mousavi was killed when he was standing in front of the Lamerd blood transfusion center, waiting for his mother; his father works there as a guard. The transfusion center was reportedly located very close to the sports hall.
A 46-year-old engineer holding PhD in naval engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Hamid Amini, was lost his life in the attack on February 28. He lived in Norway and had come to Lamerd to visit his family. According to the report by Fars News, his family had urged him to go back to Norway when a war was about to break out. He replied, “I am like ninety million Iranians—my blood is no more precious than theirs.’” Hamid was reportedly killed in the street while out shopping, and, according to Narin Bagheri, he was shopping at a pharmacy.
Since 2011, Hamid used to work for a Norwegian compnay DNV (Det Norske Veritas) – a global authority that verifies that systems, companies, and technologies meet safety and quality standards, as a principal engineer in Maritime Business Area. His death was mourned by Knut Ørbeck Nilssen, DNV’s Acting Group President and CEO, who wrote a touching tribute to his employee: “Hamid Amini was a highly valued and respected colleague at DNV for many years. His death under such tragic circumstances is deeply distressing. My thoughts and deepest sympathies go especially to his family, friends, and closest colleagues.” An image of Hamid in a white shirt was shared by the sources.
@minamonteguide posted on Twitter/X a message she had received from the wife of victim Hossein Ebrahimi who wrote “Hello, I’m from Lamard. My husband was martyred. He wasn’t military, he didn’t have any weapons. He was on his way to work when he got hit by a missile.” Mina Ghorbani further added that Ebrahimi had been a passenger in a black Dena Pus car when shrapnel hit the car which was on the street near his home, killing him. A video accompanying the post reportedly showed Ebrahimi’s car burning after catching fire. Ebrahimi’s wife @henna.lamerd posted a memorial on Instagram to her husband, expressing “I wish I had a way to heaven so I could see you again” along with an image of him posing with palm leaves in the background and on a beach.
Abdulhossein Amiri mourned multiple victims on Twitter/X, including their dear cousin Haj Abuzar Amiri, their son’s schoolmate Ilia, their friend’s son/son’s schoolmate Mir Salar, and radiology staff member Rubab.
Journalist Nerin Bagheri reported additional details of the victims of the strike, but Airwars did not identify all their names at the times of writing, except for Hamid Amini. Should additional information become available, the assessment will be updated accordingly:
“The third missile that hit the Lamerd belt area that day also killed three workers, two of whom were working: one from the same city, the other from Mamasani, and the third from Afghanistan. A grocery seller, a pedestrian living in Norway who was shopping at a pharmacy, the deputy customs officer of the Lamerd Special Zone, and several students also lost their lives in the explosion. The director of the MRI department of Lamerd Hospital also threw himself on his daughter upon hearing the sound. The daughter was saved, but the mother was not. The sibling of one of the dead is a student who had his spinal cord severed and was unaware of his sibling’s death until the time of writing this report. The student’s daughter was also blinded. Another citizen said that the shrapnel from the explosion entered her body like a blade and, like Helma, broke her leg bone, even though it was not visible.” In this description, only Hamid Amini can be identified as a “pedestrian living in Norway.”
On March 2, @ISNAMEDIA posted photos on Twitter/X depicting the funeral of many of those killed in the Lamerd attack. In one picture, a woman holds a picture of a toddler while clutching a teddy bear, apparently the little girl Avina. Other photos in the series show a massive crowd gathering around coffins draped in the Iranian flag. Another features two mourners holding portraits honoring a young woman named Zahra Asadinejad who was killed in the attack. Photographs from the funeral posted to Twitter/X by @Tasnimnews_Fa show the coffins neatly stacked in a pyramid as part of a larger display on the platform of a semi-truck. The procession features prominent portraits of Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei.
In its coverage of the funeral, SNN reported that “according to Colonel Ali Goladarian, commander of the Basij Resistance District of the Lamerd Corps, 17 of the martyrs are from Lamerd County. Three other martyrs are from Mehr and Firuzabad counties, and the rest are from Allamroodasht, Khairgo and Ashkanan districts, for which separate funeral ceremonies will be held. It should be noted that the identity of one of the minor martyrs, a citizen of Afghanistan, has been confirmed.” The news outlet provided the names of those honored in the Lamerd funeral ceremony, writing that “the people of Lamerd today, with their magnificent farewell, sent these martyrs to heaven: Zahra Gholami, Elham Zaeri, Rabab Dehdashti, Siavash Shahbazi, Ilia Khatami, Jafar Hatami, Abedin Gharibdoost, Hossein Ebrahimi, Mahmoud Najafi, Rahman Mansouri, Seyyed Reza Mousavi, Sakineh Shabani, Zahra Asadinejad, Alireza Abbasi, Seyyed Helma Ahmadizadeh, Masoumeh Monfared, Abuzar Amiri, Farhad Najafi, Hamid Amini, Avina Barzegar, and Abdul Masour Rahmani.”
A banner showing the pictures and names of 18 victims of the strike was shared by Fars News. @AbolhoseiniH on Twitter/X shared the image of all 21 victims of the incident.
Aftermath of the strikes and infrastructure damage
Various sources posted photos and videos pertaining to the attack. On Telegram, @farsna shared seven photos from the aftermath of the strikes, with one showing a badly burned building of the sports center and the others showing injured victims being treated in a hospital. The casualties include six children and one man, with many of the victims wearing athletic clothing. On Twitter/X, Tasnim News Agency (@Tasnimnews_Fa) shared photos from the “[Israeli]-American attack on a gym in Lamerd, Fars,” showing the same image of a charred building, a burning car, two injured people in a hospital, and a crushed vehicle next to a wall that seems to have incurred significant blast damage. A video posted to Twitter/X by @Pooyan_Fakhraei shows “footage of the sports hall hit and in flames.” This is the same building shown in photos by other sources.
On March 11, @Nournews_ir posted a clip of “the first moments of the [Israeli]-American regime’s attack on residential areas in Lamerd.” The video is a compilation of CCTV footage from multiple locations in the town showing the missile strike(s), some of which are presented in slow motion to highlight the suspected projectile.
In addition to the sports hall, a school, various residential buildings, shops, a theater, and a cultural center for children and teenagers were also damaged.
A video posted by a local Iranian media outlet showed the damaged interior of the adjacent school after the strike. Another video filmed by @LamerdMohr and shared on Fast News showed damage to shops and featured interviews with their owners.
Based on field reports, the building of the Lamerd center of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (CIDCA), located near the site of impact, was damaged by shrapnel from the explosions. Dozens of pellet and fragment impacts are visible on the walls and windows of the center, indicating the wide dispersal of shrapnel across the area.
The city’s amphitheater which used to host rehearsals and performances by theater groups was reportedly damaged in the attack and closed. According to local theater activists in Lamerd, the hall was one of the most important artistic spaces in the county, serving as a venue for stage performances, artistic gatherings, and educational programs.
Attribution of the strike and munitions
Multiple international news outlets and investigation teams have concluded that the strike was likely carried out by the U.S. military. On March 28, the BBC reported that “US missiles were likely used in a deadly strike on a residential area of Iran last month, according to an analysis of footage by weapons experts. The analysts said a projectile visible in footage of the strike on residential buildings in the southern town of Lamerd was likely a Precision Strike Missile (PrSM). The munition is a new long-range weapon operated by the US military.”
Similarly, on March 29, The New York Times reported that “on the first day of the war with Iran, a weapon bearing the hallmarks of a newly developed U.S.-made ballistic missile was used in an attack that struck a sports hall and adjacent elementary school near a military facility in southern Iran, according to weapons experts and a visual analysis by The New York Times.” The analysis went on to state that “The Times verified videos of two strikes in Lamerd, as well as aftermath footage from the attacks,” and “Times reporters and munitions experts found that the weapon features, explosions and damage are consistent with a short-range ballistic missile called the Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM (pronounced like “prism”), which is designed to detonate just above its target and blast small tungsten pellets outward.” Further, it reports that “a U.S. official who spoke to The Times confirmed that the missile used in the Lamerd strike was the PrSM.” According to the NYT, The PrSM was designed to replace the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, in the Army and Marine Corps arsenal. Developed by Lockheed Martin in Camden, Ark., it’s capable of hitting targets at a range of approximately 400 miles.
A reporter for Iranian Channel 7 claimed that “the residential homes—walls near the site of the explosion, and even the asphalt ground beside the sports hall in Lamerd—were riddled with holes.” @Christiaan Triebert on Twitter/X shared an image of an “apparent tungsten pellet” from the U.S. strikes on Lamerd, explaning that “PrSM is designed to detonate above target and disperse thousands of these pellets outward.”
However, on March 31, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) released a statement claiming that “U.S. forces did not launch any strikes at any time into the city of Lamerd or anywhere within 30 miles during the opening day of Operation Epic Fury. Furthermore, video footage circulated by media outlets alleging U.S. involvement does not show a Precision Strike Missile (PrSM). A PrSM is 13 feet in length. The munition depicted in the video appears to be twice as long, consistent with the dimensions and silhouette of an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile.”
In response, the BBC published an article on April 3 that defended its earlier reporting and disputed the US CENTCOM’s claims, writing that “six experts – who examined footage of the strike and all commented independently – contested the US suggestion that it was an Iranian missile, citing the missile’s visual features, the way it exploded, its trajectory and the number of strikes in the area as the basis for their analysis.” According to the BBC, “multiple weapons experts have disputed Centcom’s claims, noting the Hoveyzeh has a number of distinctive features which they say are not visible in the Lamerd strike footage.” The article also quoted a Mckenzie Intelligence analyst, saying that “while it is feasible that an Iranian cruise missile could malfunction, it is a bit beyond credulity to have a number of them fail above the same location at the same time” and noted that “experts also say the munition in the verified CCTV footage does not appear to be damaged, malfunctioning or intercepted.”
The BBC’s April 3 article calls CENTCOM’s statement further into question for its claims that “US forces did not launch any strikes at any time into the city of Lamerd or anywhere within 30 miles during the opening day of Operation Epic Fury, but the US Department of Defense has previously posted an illustrative map captioned “First 100 hours” of the US-Israeli war with Iran, marking the locations of US-Israeli strikes and Iranian air defences along Iran’s southern coast, including the area around Lamerd.”
Shedding light on a possible target of the attack, The New York Times noted in its March 29 article that “there is an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or I.R.G.C., compound directly next to the sports hall… but according to archival satellite imagery, [the school and sport hall] have been walled off from the compound for at least 15 years.”
Documentary filmmaker Seyyed Mohsen Hashemi, in collaboration with the Avini Institute, made a documentary about the incident, titled “The Final Whistle.” He said in the comments to Khabar Online: “We visited the hospital and various parts of the city. It gradually became clear that the subject was a precision missile attack; an attack that unfortunately had the nature of causing mass casualties. The type of ammunition was also special; something that had never been seen before in the region and was being used for the first time. Its effects also showed that we were dealing with an unusual weapon.” He also added that “it became clear that the type of missile was not destructive at all; that is, it did not destroy the building, but its wave and thermal effect had caused widespread damage over a large radius. Even the windows of houses that were a kilometer away had collapsed; cars were burned and there were many injured.”
Where sources identified the belligerent, most sources attributed the strikes to U.S. and Israeli forces. Investigations by the BBC and The New York Times determined that the strikes were likely carried out by the U.S. military; however, U.S. CENTCOM has denied any responsibility in the attack and instead placed blame on the Iranian military. However, this allegation was not supported by any local sources.