Some images break the world’s heart. The photograph of little Mikaeil Mirdoraghi waving goodbye to his mother on the morning of February 28, 2026, is one of them. He was going to school. He never came home.
Mikaeil Mirdoraghi was a Class 3 student who was killed in the US-Israel strike in Iran. The last photograph captured of him shows him saying goodbye to his mother while leaving for school that morning.
The airstrikes began at around 10:00 a.m. local time on Saturday, February 28, the same time Iranian families send their children to school, as Saturday is a working day in Iran. The Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the southern city of Minab, Hormozgan province, was struck by a missile as classes were changing periods. The school had around 170 students present at the time, mostly girls between seven and twelve years old.
Iranian authorities put the final death toll at 165 people, most of them young girls. At least 95 others were wounded. As images of the destruction spread across social media, US and Israeli spokespeople said they were unaware that a school had been hit.
Iran held a mass funeral for the 165 schoolgirls and staff killed in the attack. Thousands filled a public square in Minab to mourn, with women draped in black chadors and men waving the Iranian flag in grief.
Satellite image analysis later revealed that the school had been deliberately separated from the nearby military complex over the past ten years and fully converted to civilian use, yet it was still struck.
Mikaeil’s photograph has since travelled across the world, a small boy, a schoolbag, a wave goodbye, and a mother who never imagined that morning would be their last.
