Six hours after a deadly attack on a school in Iran’s Hormozgan province that claimed more than 150 lives, mostly children, a new chapter of tragedy unfolded in the small southern Iranian town of Lamerd, population 30,000. On that afternoon in late February, four never-before-deployed Lockheed Martin Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM), developed by the United States, struck civilian targets across the town: a local school, its adjacent sports facilities, and nearby residential neighborhoods.
It was just under an hour before iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan, and classes had only recently ended for the day. Had the strike come earlier, local officials confirm, the death toll would have been catastrophic on an unimaginable scale. Even so, the damage and loss of life carried profound, lasting weight for the tight-knit community.
Rounia, a 12-year-old volleyball player, was mid-practice in the school gym when the first blast ripped through the building. “We were in our practice when we heard the first impact. We rushed to the door,” she recalled to reporters from Middle East Eye, one of the first international outlets to access the site after the attack. A second missile slammed into the complex moments later, filling the sports hall with thick smoke and searing heat that plunged the room into total darkness. The blast force jammed the exit doors shut, trapping the team and their coach inside.
“We couldn’t see anything,” Rahimeh Shehabi, the girls’ volleyball coach, told MEE. “We could only hear the screams of the children.”
Outside the gym, a group of young boys were in the middle of a casual football match when the first explosions hit. Shrapnel from the warheads scattered across the pitch, forcing the children to run for cover. Eleven-year-old Mahdiar, one of the players, recounted that his coach, Mahmoud Najafi, called the group to safety under a nearby canopy before rushing with 12-year-old player Ilya Khatami to the gym to free the trapped girls and women. A fourth missile struck the corner of the gym as the pair worked to pry open the blocked doors.
“The fourth missile hit here,” Ilya’s father, Mohammad Khatami, told MEE, gesturing to the collapsed concrete corner of the gymnasium. “The force of the blast struck Ilya in the back of the head.” Ilya did not survive the strike. Najafi, the football coach, was also killed. For Mohammad Khatami, returning to the scarred gym is almost unbearable, but he finds small comfort in knowing his son died helping others: “It is really painful for me,” he said, “But I’m happy that my son was so responsible that he was with his coach, helping open the door for the girls.”
In total, the Lamerd strike left 21 people dead, six of them children, and more than 150 wounded. The youngest victim was two-year-old Avina Bazingar, who was struck by shrapnel while playing in her family’s yard. Local surgeon and parliamentarian Dr. Moussa Mousavi, who operated on Avina for three hours as she kept her pacifier in her mouth, said she could not be saved. Among the other child victims were 10-year-old Helma Ahmadizadeh, 11-year-old Elham Zaeri – both Rounia’s volleyball teammates – 12-year-old Abdulmosavar Rahmani, one of Mahdiar’s football teammates, 16-year-old Zahra Gholami, and a young adult nurse killed while praying for the Minab victims in her yard. Months later, the nurse’s mother told MEE an orange residue from the blast still lingers in her home, no matter how many times she cleans.
Mousavi, a veteran surgeon who treated war wounded during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, said he has never encountered a weapon as devastating as the PrSM. Each missile carries roughly 180,000 small tungsten pellets designed to disperse at high speed during an airburst detonation, meaning the four strikes that hit Lamerd scattered a total of 720,000 pellets across the residential area – an average of 24 pellets for every resident of the town. Unlike conventional shrapnel that often lodges in tissue, these pellets have an extremely high penetration rate: they tear through entire body parts, explode inside organs, and leave survivors with permanent, life-altering disabilities.
“These pellets are like bullets fired from a rifle,” Mousavi explained. Comparing the munition to the controversial “butterfly bullets” used by the Israeli military in Palestinian territories, he noted the pellets are designed to not only kill but to leave survivors with mass permanent injury. One 15-year-old girl was left completely blind in the strike; another young girl, once known for her public speaking skill, can no longer speak at all; a third suffered irreversible spinal damage that left her paralyzed and bedridden; multiple young football players had their leg muscles and bones completely pulverized, robbing them of the ability to walk, let alone play the sport they loved.
Mousavi called the strike a deliberate crime against children, pointing to an early statement from US Central Command (Centcom) that celebrated the first combat use of PrSM just days after the attack. “In a historic first, long-range Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs) were used in combat during Operation Epic Fury, providing an unrivaled deep strike capability,” Centcom wrote on social media days after the tragedy. Weeks later, however, Centcom reversed its position, issuing an official denial that US forces had carried out the strike. The command instead claimed the damage came from a misfired Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile, adding that US forces did not operate within 48 kilometers of Lamerd. The Trump administration echoed this denial, saying that after an internal review, all accusations of US involvement were confirmed to be false.
Independent investigations and on-the-ground reporting contradict this official US narrative. A New York Times investigation, citing independent weapons experts, found the pattern of mid-air detonation and pellet-style shrapnel damage found in Lamerd matches the design of the PrSM far more closely than Iran’s Hoveyzeh missile. MEE’s on-the-ground observation also confirmed there are no military targets – no Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps bases, no weapons depots, no military installations – in the areas that were hit. All casualties were civilian, with no reported military personnel among the dead or wounded. Even the US military’s claim of “surgical strike” capability falls apart in Lamerd: every site hit by the missiles was civilian infrastructure, from the school and sports facilities to a local hair salon, neighborhood travel agency, and rows of family homes.
Introduced into US service in 2023, the PrSM was designed to replace the older Army Tactical Missile System, with a compact frame and a standard range of 300 to 500 kilometers – the US is currently developing longer-range variants that can exceed 1,000 kilometers. The US depleted its stock of PrSM missiles in the early weeks of the ongoing conflict in the region and is currently investing heavily in scaling up production of the system. The damage left by the four PrSM strikes in Lamerd is visible throughout the targeted neighborhoods: concrete walls are pocked with thousands of tiny holes, cars are riddled with shrapnel and burned down to their frames, and destroyed buildings still stand as reminders of the attack. One charred vehicle and wrecked truck remain in public view in the town, permanent markers of the destruction that day.
Months after the tragedy, the people of Lamerd have begun the slow work of rebuilding their community, bound by shared grief and collective solidarity. In the immediate aftermath of the strike, residents poured into local hospitals to volunteer, queued for hours to donate blood, and organized support for the families of the dead and wounded. “Everyone was volunteering, asking: ‘What can we do to help others?’” one local nurse told MEE. “This unity the Iranian people have doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Even among those who survived the strike, the community’s resolve remains unbroken. Rounia, the young volleyball player who escaped the gym trapped, has returned to practice. Mahdiar, the 11-year-old football player who lost his coach and two teammates, still holds fast to his dream. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he answered without hesitation: “A football player.”