TEHRAN -- More than 68 body fragments belonging to 34 students martyred in a U.S. airstrike on an Iranian elementary school have been identified through DNA testing and buried, nearly five months after the attack that killed 168 people, most of them children.
The remains, recovered during months of search operations at the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab and surrounding areas, were carried through the streets of Hormozgan province on Wednesday in a large funeral procession before burial at the city’s Martyrs’ Cemetery.
Thousands of mourners, including bereaved families, students, teachers, provincial officials, artists, shopkeepers, athletes and residents from across Hormozgan, joined the procession, which began at Imam Khomeini Square in Minab and ended at the city’s Martyrs’ Cemetery.
Grieving parents and other citizens had gathered earlier at the site where the coffins were prepared to bid a final farewell to what remained of their children.
The ceremony was attended by Ayatollah Mohsen Ebrahimi, Hormozgan’s representative in the Assembly of Experts, Ahmad Nafisi, the province’s deputy governor for political, security and social affairs, Minab Governor Muhammad Radmehr, members of local administrative and security councils, and the families of the victims.
Participants said the ceremony was both a final farewell to the children and a renewed pledge to preserve the memory of those martyred in the attack.
Mojtaba Qahramani, head of Hormozgan’s judiciary, said that despite multiple specialized search operations at the school and its environs, no trace has been found of 7-year-old Makan Nasiri, a first-grader who remains the only victim whose body has never been recovered.
Qahramani told the Fars news agency that the U.S. missile struck directly at the location where Makan was standing at the moment of impact.
An empty grave has been prepared for Makan, while his personal belongings, including a bloodstained sweater and a single sneaker, are preserved in a glass display case at a nearby mosque.
His parents have spent months searching for any sign of their son. “Where am I supposed to look for my son?” his father asked in an interview earlier this year, his eyes filled with tears.
The Feb. 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School occurred on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli military aggression against Iran and is considered the terrorist war’s deadliest attack on civilians.
Iranian officials put the death toll at 168, including 120 students and 26 teachers. More than 110 people were wounded.
Investigations indicate three precision-strike Tomahawk missiles hit the school. The school was struck three separate times.
The attack has drawn condemnation from the United Nations and human rights groups.
“The families of the little girls who were killed are entitled to the truth of how this happened,” 
Ravina Shamdasani, a UN Human Rights Office spokesperson, said.
The 68 fragments buried Wednesday were identified as belonging to 34 students, according to Minab Governor Muhammad Radmehr and the Hormozgan Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs.
Among them were remains of Amirali Kamali, identified after nearly five months of searching. The recovered fragments had been awaiting DNA identification for weeks before the funeral ceremony.
Ataollah Navaki, director-general of the Hormozgan Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, said the operation to recover and identify the remains followed more than four months of continuous searches at the site of the attack.
After the remains were transferred to specialized genetic identification centers and DNA matches were confirmed, authorities coordinated with the victims’ families to reunite the newly identified fragments with the bodies that had already been buried, he said.
Navaki said four victims whose bodies had remained largely intact, although partially burned, were buried individually, while the remaining recovered fragments were collectively reunited with the graves of the Shajareh Tayyebeh martyrs, bringing a measure of closure to families after months of waiting.
Minab’s prosecutor said 73 boys and 47 girls were among the students martyred. The martyrs also included seven parents who had rushed to the school to retrieve their children after hearing reports of airstrikes on Tehran.
Addressing mourners, Ahmad Nafisi, Hormozgan’s deputy governor for political, security and social affairs, said the ceremony was “not merely the return of remains, but a reaffirmation of the historical memory of a nation that will never forget the deliberate killing of innocent children at Shajareh Tayyebeh School.”
He said the large public turnout demonstrated that the passage of time had not diminished the grief of the people of Minab and described the gathering as a response to those who believed the tragedy would eventually be forgotten.
Many participants also renewed calls for the preserved remains of the destroyed school to be protected as a national memorial dedicated to the victims, describing the site as a lasting symbol of resistance and the suffering endured by civilians during the conflict.
The school is also set to be registered as a national site in Iran, recognizing its significance as a symbol of sacrifice and resilience.
Months after the strike, the Pentagon has refused to complete a standard intelligence review that would establish exactly what happened, according to multiple U.S. officials and media reports.
The military completed the first two stages of its assessment within days of the strike, confirming U.S. forces hit the school. But the final intelligence review — standard procedure for incidents involving mass civilian casualties — was never ordered.
Senior U.S. military commanders reportedly bypassed warnings in critical targeting databases that intelligence on Iranian targets was severely outdated. The decision to ignore the warnings was made for “expediency,” as commanders rushed to finalize target lists at the outset of the war.
President Donald Trump, in a Fox News interview, said the findings may never be made public.
“I don’t think anybody is ever going to be able to say what happened there,” he said. When pressed on satellite imagery showing fragments of a U.S. Tomahawk missile at the site, Trump suggested the images could be “AI generated.”
More than two dozen Democratic senators demanded answers, writing that “there is no justification for withholding an unclassified accounting of what happened, what went wrong, and what the Department is doing to prevent recurrence.”