The youngest victims of the 12-day war

Telegraph

2 days ago

Rayan Qasemian was too small for the oxygen mask used by doctors in Tehran to try and save his life.
His entire body was wrapped in brown bandages and wires attached to his tiny head. Machines beeped and buzzed all around him as oxygen flowed.
Just hours earlier, an Israeli missile struck his apartment building, killing his mother and father. His older brother was injured and also died in hospital.
In a video broadcast by Iranian media, the boys' grandfather was seen walking through the rubble, speaking to reporters.
Holding up a photo of Rayan on his phone, he said: 'We were on the third floor when they hit the sixth. I rushed Rayan Qasemian to the hospital and took this picture.'
It would be the last picture of Rayan alive. At just two months old, he became the youngest victim of Iran and Israel's 12-day war.
The true scale of Iran's death toll is only just coming to light as the country has blocked access to most of the internet and any information available is heavily censored.
But it is believed that Rayan was one of 38 children killed.
At his funeral on June 26, a small coffin draped in the Iranian flag was carried by mourners attending the service. A photograph from the cemetery showed that he was buried in the same grave as his mother Zohreh.
'She was a doctor,' Rayan's grandfather said of his mother. 'She spoke to her nurses before the strikes and told them not to wait for her.'
The family's story has been widely shared by Iranian media, but foreign journalists are not allowed into the country to tell such painful stories – or verify the numbers.
Iran has claimed that 935 people were 'martyred' in Israeli airstrikes that targeted Tehran's nuclear facilities, military sites and air defences.
But the missiles also killed civilians: bank clerks, social workers visiting prisoners and a mother who had brought her five-year-old son to work because nursery was closed.
Other victims included Taha Behruzi and Alisan Jabbari, both seven, from Tabriz, who were ready for their first day of school with packed bags and notebooks.
Instead, they were killed by shrapnel from a downed Israeli drone as they played outside their homes.
Alisan's mother said: 'My seven-year-old was playing – unaware of the enemy's dirty world – when the attack began.
'He was hit in the head. I bent down to hug him and at that moment, I was wounded too. I took the child to the courtyard... We both rolled in blood and he died in my arms.'
In Isfahan, 13-year-old Fatemeh Sharifi was killed alongside her younger brother Mojtaba and their parents.
Ehsan Qasemi, a 16-year-old from Qom's Salarieh district, was killed in his home.
Amir Ali Chatr-Anbarin, a student in year eight at Shahid Ali Akbar School in central Lahijan, was visiting relatives in northern Astaneh-ye Ashrafiyeh when he too was killed in a strike.
His parents, safe at home in Lahijan, were told by a phone call that their son would never return from his overnight stay.
In Tehran, year four student Servin Hamidian, from Shahid Beheshti Elementary School, died with his mother when Israeli bombs fell on the capital.
Ali, four, Fatemeh, 10, and Reyhaneh, 14, were killed alongside their mother and grandparents as Israeli forces struck their home to target their father Mostafa Sadati-Armaki, a nuclear scientist. All seven members of the Sadati-Armaki family were killed.
A funeral banner in a local mosque showed nine photos of the family, with the additional two being relatives killed when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in the 1980s.
Asghar Jahangir, Iran's judiciary spokesman, placed the death toll at 935 people, including 132 women.
The scale of civilian casualties has drawn sharp criticism from Iranian officials, who have argued that Israel's actions constituted war crimes.
Esmaeil Baghaei, the foreign ministry spokesman, said the country would transfer evidence to international organisations, demanding accountability for what he called acts of aggression against innocent civilians.
While the Islamic Republic has described them as martyrs and state media has broadcast solemn ceremonies honouring the dead, many ordinary Iranians have directed their anger not at foreign enemies, but at the man who has ruled their nation for nearly four decades.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, faced a crisis of legitimacy even before missiles rained down on Iranian soil.
The very people he claimed to be protecting have increasingly blamed him for the devastation that has befallen their homeland.
Analysts have said the grievances are multifaceted but centred on what many Iranians see as Khamenei's fundamental miscalculations.
Firstly, his commitment to the destruction of Israel is an ideological position that most Iranians do not share, surveys have suggested.
Secondly, his pursuit of nuclear weapons capability, which he believed would render his regime untouchable, has instead brought crushing international sanctions.
The economic toll has been devastating.
Iran, which was once among the world's major oil exporters, has been reduced to a shadow of its former prosperity.
The Iranian rial has collapsed, inflation has soared and millions of people have struggled to afford basic necessities.
Young people, who make up the majority of Iran's population, have seen their futures constrained by an economy crippled under decades of confrontation with the West.
Reza, a resident of central Isfahan, which was hit hard in the strikes as it is home to one of the country's main nuclear sites, said the Israeli attacks have shifted public sentiment.
While many blamed the regime for bringing war to their doorsteps, he said there was a new-found unity among Iranians in the face of foreign threats.
He told The Telegraph: 'Many people who once supported the regime are now blaming it for dragging us into this war. We used to watch conflicts unfold across the Middle East on TV and thank God we lived in a safe country.
'But believe me, I haven't slept in two weeks. Every time I doze off, a loud bang jolts me awake. We didn't ask for this – this wasn't the people's war. It was the regime that pushed us into it.
'They talk about a ceasefire but that's meaningless. That taboo has been broken. Now Israel can strike whenever it wants.'
But Reza said the attacks revealed something that made him proud.
'People who disagreed with the regime and its supporters stood together against the foreign enemy,' he said. 'Defending Iran matters more to me than defending or supporting the Islamic Republic. I won't give up even one wajab [about a foot] of Iranian soil.'
Across the country, communities have mobilised to support one another. In towns and villages, residents have opened their homes to those displaced by airstrikes.
Shopkeepers have lowered prices on essential goods and neighbours have gone door to door offering help to those in need.