TEHRAN – A catastrophic air strike on a private residential building in northern Tehran on Sunday claimed the lives of three members of the family.
Victims – 65, his wife, Fateme, and his 37-year-old daughter, Amene, known as Hadisi, were inside a second-floor apartment in a three-storey building on Mohabe Street near the Seiyad Kandan Bridge when the attack occurred around 3:40pm on the local area, the Vita Moonavians were
The explosion knocked down parts of the structure and trapped them under the tiled rubber. Witnesses and local reports revealed that the explosion significantly rendered the body unrecognizable and DNA testing was required to identify it.
The couple retired from private companies. The only family of their surviving family, 31-year-old Mohammad, was working during the blast. He rushed to the scene after a neighbor warned him about an incident in their area. He was unable to contact his parents or sisters by phone so he arrived to find an abandoned building. Witnesses said he was screaming in agony as he recognized his sister’s vibrant body under the shrapnel.
Mohammad’s aunt Musabi arrived at the site after being contacted by her nephew. Her scream, initially blocked by emergency personnel due to safety concerns, eventually moved authorities to approach the scene. She waited for hours in confusion and despair before one of the responders confirmed that all three of her relatives had died in the explosion.
Late Sunday night, Musabi and other surviving families traveled to Karizak Forensic Medical Centre on the Tehran Kum Expressway in search of information. Without an immediate answer, they joined other grieving families at the centre’s closed gates. Ultimately, employees confirmed that the bodies of Saeid, Fatemeh and Ameneh had been transported to the facility.
By the morning of Monday, June 16th, close relatives had submitted DNA samples for identity verification, leaving them unaware of the fate of other residents of the same building. According to Mousavi, her nie Ameneh survived a serious illness last year.
The strike was one of the most important incidents in Tehran and many other Iranian cities, including civilian casualties in recent memory, raising new concerns about targeting non-military locations.
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