New Delhi:
Nearly seven months into the war, the United States has still not apologised for the strike on a primary school in Iran's Minab city, a senior Iranian representative said at the NDTV World Summit. Ayatullah Abdul Majid Hakeem Elahi, representative of Iran's Supreme Leader and a senior diplomat, said the attack killed 168 people and that the bodies of some of the children remain unrecovered.
"They attacked Iran. On February 28, they attacked a primary school two times and killed 168 innocent people at the school. Till now, some of the bodies of these children couldn't be found," he said.
"Their mothers and fathers are still crying because they don't have any grave to go to and cry for their children."
Elahi noted that a new academic session started in Iran, the parents of children killed in the strike are struggling to come to terms with their loss. "They brought a lot of notebooks and books for the children, but there is no one. Now they are suffering."
Slamming the US government under the Donald Trump administration, the Iranian diplomat noted that Washington is yet to apologise for bombing the civilian target when the war started on February 28.
"Unfortunately until now the United States, the State of America, didn't apologise for this big mistake and for attacking our primary school. Furthermore, the UN sent an investigators' committee for investigating this event," he said.
At the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran in February, at least one US missile hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab. There has been no final accounting of what happened. Iranian state media have reported that the strike killed 168 people, most of them children.
The Trump administration has yet to directly accept responsibility or release the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the school bombing.
The UN-backed team based its allegations on two strikes, one involving Tomahawk missiles that hit the "clearly identifiable" school and another in which Precision Strike Missiles dispersed tungsten pellets over a "clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area" in the southern city of Lamerd, also on February 28.
The UN-backed team said 22 civilian men and women were killed. US Central Command has denied responsibility for the strike on Lamerd.