TEHRAN – The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has vowed that the blood of five civilians martyred in a U.S. missile strike on a wedding ceremony in southern Iran “will never go unanswered”, as Tehran pressed the United Nations to condemn the war crime.
The attack on Tuesday evening in the coastal village of Kouhestak in Hormozgan Province killed five people, including a four-year-old child, and wounded 68 others, mostly women and children. The strike hit a residential building where families had gathered to celebrate the wedding of a fisherman’s daughter.
IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi said in a message to the victims’ families on Thursday that the “horrific crime” demonstrates the depth of U.S. hostility toward Iran. 
“The pure blood of these oppressed martyrs will never go unanswered and will certainly catch up with those who carried out and ordered this horrific crime,” Vahidi said.
The attack was part of a broader wave of U.S. strikes on Tuesday that martyred at least 18 people and wounded 108 across several Iranian provinces, according to Health Minister Muhammad-Reza Zafarghandi. Other targets included a fishing pier, a port authority tower and a fishmeal factory on Qeshm Island.
Former senior Pentagon official Wes J. Bryant, who served as the U.S. military’s chief of civilian harm assessments, told Al Jazeera that Washington is deliberately killing civilians in Iran. 
“Is the U.S. intentionally targeting civilians in Iran? It is,” Bryant said, rejecting U.S. Central Command’s assertion that American forces never target civilians.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council, Iran’s UN Ambassador Gholamhussein Darzi called the Kouhestak attack a “grave violation of international humanitarian law” that “amounts to a war crime.”
Darzi noted that the attack was part of a pattern of U.S. and Israeli strikes since February 28 that have repeatedly targeted civilians and infrastructure, including the bombing of a primary school in Minab that killed more than 160 students and teachers.
“The deliberate and indiscriminate killing of civilians, particularly children, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure cannot be normalized or justified merely as ‘collateral damage,’” Darzi wrote.
TEHRAN – The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has vowed that the blood of five civilians martyred in a U.S. missile strike on a wedding ceremony in southern Iran “will never go unanswered”, as Tehran pressed the United Nations to condemn the war crime.
The attack on Tuesday evening in the coastal village of Kouhestak in Hormozgan Province killed five people, including a four-year-old child, and wounded 68 others, mostly women and children. The strike hit a residential building where families had gathered to celebrate the wedding of a fisherman’s daughter.
IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi said in a message to the victims’ families on Thursday that the “horrific crime” demonstrates the depth of U.S. hostility toward Iran. 
“The pure blood of these oppressed martyrs will never go unanswered and will certainly catch up with those who carried out and ordered this horrific crime,” Vahidi said.
The attack was part of a broader wave of U.S. strikes on Tuesday that martyred at least 18 people and wounded 108 across several Iranian provinces, according to Health Minister Muhammad-Reza Zafarghandi. Other targets included a fishing pier, a port authority tower and a fishmeal factory on Qeshm Island.
Former senior Pentagon official Wes J. Bryant, who served as the U.S. military’s chief of civilian harm assessments, told Al Jazeera that Washington is deliberately killing civilians in Iran. 
“Is the U.S. intentionally targeting civilians in Iran? It is,” Bryant said, rejecting U.S. Central Command’s assertion that American forces never target civilians.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council, Iran’s UN Ambassador Gholamhussein Darzi called the Kouhestak attack a “grave violation of international humanitarian law” that “amounts to a war crime.”
Darzi noted that the attack was part of a pattern of U.S. and Israeli strikes since February 28 that have repeatedly targeted civilians and infrastructure, including the bombing of a primary school in Minab that killed more than 160 students and teachers.
“The deliberate and indiscriminate killing of civilians, particularly children, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure cannot be normalized or justified merely as ‘collateral damage,’” Darzi wrote.