Civilian death and destruction mounted across Iran on Tuesday as the war with Israel and the US dragged on into its fourth day.
With weakened air defences and minimal warning systems, residents of the Tehran and other Iranian cities reported damage to homes and businesses, as the US and Israel attacked security and military complexes, many within a stone’s throw of people’s homes.
“Unfortunately, all of this is happening in the middle of residential buildings, so the neighbouring houses are all being damaged,” one resident of Tehran told The National.
Compounds belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s most formidable military power, as well as the Basij militia and police, have been attacked in air strikes that hit the Iranian capital several times a day, verified video and residents confirm.
Air defence systems were “not really working” because most had been damaged or destroyed in the 12-day war with Israel last June, or on the first day of this conflict on Saturday, the resident said.
“We don’t even have alarms,” he added. “People are scared and crestfallen, and unfortunately it’s having an impact on people. Tehran is being attacked several times a day, buildings near our house were hit.” The resident sent The National pictures of black and grey smoke rising above the rooftops within a few hundred metres of his home.
Iran tried to set up a warning system to alert people to imminent strikes, another Tehran resident told The National. “But it doesn't work.”
Iran's Red Crescent Society said the nationwide death toll had risen to 787 by Tuesday morning and that attacks had occurred in more than 500 places in about half of Iran's counties.
At least six hospitals and clinics in Tehran have been damaged from the force of nearby air strikes, said the organisation, which is part of the global network of Red Cross and Red Crescent groups. These include the Gandhi Hotel Hospital, where images and video showed debris on the floor, damage to walls and patients lying on the floor.
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said reports of damage to the hospital were “extremely worrying” and said “all efforts” must be made to protect health services from the conflict.
The Iranian Red Crescent also published footage from an intensive care unit for babies, in Bushehr on Iran’s southern coast, showing two newborns under a damaged ceiling. The rest of the hospital was being evacuated, a Red Crescent worker says in the video.
The UN’s human rights chief has also called for an urgent investigation into an air strike on Saturday on a girls’ school in the southern city of Minab, in which 165 people were reported killed, most of them children.
Volker Turk called for “a prompt, impartial and thorough investigation into the circumstances of the attack. The onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it,” his office said.
A mass funeral for the victims was held on Tuesday, after rescuers finished pulling the dead from the rubble. Images showed rows of small graves dug into grey earth.
Tehran blamed the attack on the US and Israel. The Israeli military said it was “not aware” of any operations in the area. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US forces “would not deliberately target a school”.
While most cases appear not to be direct hits, civilian homes, businesses and heritage sites across the country have been damaged by blasts from Israeli and US air strikes.
The BBC’s Persian service verified videos of shattered windows and damaged shopfronts at Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar, after attacks on the nearby judicial complex.
The Golestan Palace, a Unesco world heritage site, sustained widespread damage, including shattered wood and glass, after an air strike in a “buffer zone” around the site, the UN’s cultural organisation said.
Unesco had communicated the co-ordinates of world heritage sites and others of “national interest” to “all parties concerned”, it said in a statement. It was unclear whether this took place before the strikes that damaged the Golestan Palace.
One of the Tehran residents described the city as a “ghost town”, as most people stayed at home, and businesses and banks shut up shop.
Fewer people have fled the capital than during the previous war with Israel, but damage to hospitals and the Minab school strike have raised the level of fear among many Iranians, he added. “This made people really, really scared,” he said. “War is scary in any case.”
