nuclear-news

Obscene US-Israeli murder of Iranian schoolchildren cannot be whitewashed

Western media is either silent or implicitly blaming Tehran for the strike that killed 168 girl

Eva Karene Bartlett, Substack,, Mar 05, 2026

In Iran, under ongoing US-Israeli attacks, a mass funeral took place today for 168 Iranian schoolgirls aged 7-12, killed by an Israeli airstrike on February 28.

The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, southern Iran, in broad daylight, when the children were at school. Fourteen teachers were also killed in the bombing. The bombing occurred as part of US-Israeli attacks sadistically dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’, attacks which have to date targeted schools, hospitals, residential areas and other civilian infrastructure.

It was a scene all too familiar to Palestinians: grief-stricken parents collapsing sobbing at the site of their daughters’ murders, clutching bloodstained backpacks, pulling out schoolbooks and personal items of their slain daughters. Children’s desks covered in debris from the bombing. A child’s shoe in the rubble. Death where life had flourished.

None of this is being conveyed by Western legacy media – only ghoulish gloating over the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran and the murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his young granddaughter and children.

On March 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted a photo of the graves being dug on X, noting, “These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds. This is how “rescue” promised by Mr. Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood.”

At the time of this writing, 69 of the murdered girls remain unidentified.

International media reaction: Silence

If the bombed school had been in Israel or Ukraine, news of it would have been plastered on front pages of Western media for days, with widespread demands for retaliation, or at least for justice and accountability. Back in 2016, Western media alleged Syria or Russian planes had injured Aleppo boy Omran Daqneesh. His photo went viral, for weeks, even years. A CNN news anchor fake-sobbed for the boy.

In 2017, in his Aleppo home, his father told me their home was not hit in an airstrike, but rather terrorists shelled it and used the boy in a cynical, and effective, photo op.

Footage shared on Telegram and on X clearly show horrific scenes of some of the young girls torn apart in the US-Israeli bombing of their school. But just like the untold thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel, as well as the half a million Iraqi children killed by US sanctions, these Iranian children’s lives don’t merit Western media outrage. Instead, they produce cynical reports that not only lack any semblance of empathy, but suggest that Iran is either lying about or is to blame for the murders.

Take the BBC’s report, which describes the massacre as a “reported” strike on a school, which “Iran has blamed the US and Israel” for. Casting doubt is standard for legacy media whitewashing the US and Israel’s crimes. The US is “looking into reports.” Israel is “not aware.” Just one of those mysterious unknown strikes.

The BBC then overtly blamed the Iranian government as untrustworthy, writing, “Deep mistrust of the Iranian regime, however, makes official reports difficult for many to accept, and some Iranians directly blamed the regime for the attack.”………………………………………….

Most Western media cite The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) as saying it was “looking into reports of the incident,” and the Israeli army as saying it was “not aware of any IDF operations in the area.”Ah yes, the guilty shall investigate themselves. Right.

Even if you set aside the actual culprit of the school bombing, legacy media reports are devoid of any concern for the slaughtered children: no details, no empathy, no mention that they were murdered in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The tone would be radically different were the children Israeli, Ukrainian or American. We would see names, ages, stories about them. They would be humanized – if only they were not Iranian (or Palestinian, or Lebanese, or Syrian)………………………………………………… https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/obscene-us-israeli-murder-of-iranian?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=189965341&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

March 8, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, media