Months after American missiles tore into this southern Iranian city, the ground around Lamerd’s Shahid Naeimi Sports Complex still bears the marks of one of the clearest examples of America’s disregard for civilian life and the laws of war.
On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei brought journalists from major international and domestic media outlets to Lamerd, taking them to the locations struck on Feb. 28 during the U.S.-Israeli terrorist war against Iran. 
He visited the sites himself, met families of those martyred and wounded and held a news conference at the scene of an American war crime where he delivered a blunt message: Iran would not allow the killings of Lamerd’s civilians
 to disappear into the long list of casualties of war.
“We are here to help ensure that this crime is recorded — for Iranians, for future generations and for the world,” Baghaei said. He said the attack demonstrated how the United States and Israel had sought to terrorize the Iranian population and force the country to surrender.
The evidence on the ground, he said, left no room for ambiguity.
Four missiles struck the 30,000-person city within roughly 35 seconds. Each missile carried about 180,000 pellets, Baghaei said, and the locations struck were civilian sites, including residential areas. The attack martyred 21 people and wounded scores of others.
“This is undoubtedly a war crime,” Baghaei said, stressing that the weapon used was prohibited and that the sites hit were civilian and non-military.
The significance of the attack, he said, went beyond the deaths recorded that day. The missiles were designed to spread thousands of projectiles over a wide area, turning residential streets and a sports facility into what Iranian officials describe as a killing zone.
And Lamerd’s survivors remain living evidence of what happened.
Among the victims was Avina Barzegar, a two-year-old girl. Baghaei invoked her name during Saturday’s visit, describing her as a symbol of the suffering inflicted on Iranian civilians.
The pellets that struck Avina’s body penetrated so deeply that, Baghaei said, they tore her body apart. 
Her death is no longer simply a statistic in a wartime casualty report. It has become one of the faces of the Lamerd tragedy.
The wounds of the survivors tell another part of the story. Avina’s brother still carries pellets in his leg months after the attack. 
On Saturday, the child’s brother displayed the wounds that remain from the missile attack, while a damaged heavy vehicle at the scene — its steel frame punctured by the pellets — has become another physical record of the weapon’s destructive reach.
Two other survivors, Amir-Muhammad and Mahdiar, were also present at Saturday’s press conference. They had been playing football when the attack struck.
Children who had gone to play sport were suddenly caught inside an attack that had no legitimate military target.
For Lamerd residents, the question is therefore not merely what weapon was used. It is why such a weapon was used over a civilian city at all.
The characteristics of the missile provide a crucial answer. The weapon has been promoted by its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, as a long-range, highly precise system, while the U.S. military announced that PrSMs had been used in Iran in what was described as a “historic first.”
Independent weapons experts have also linked the munition’s characteristics to the Lamerd strike. Washington, however, has unabashedly denied that U.S. forces attacked Lamerd.
A U.S. official cited by The New York Times confirmed that the missile used in the attack was the PrSM and that the weapon was being tested in combat for the first time. 
Airwars, weapons experts and journalists analyzing verified video and the pattern of destruction found characteristics consistent with the missile, including an airburst and the dispersal of large numbers of high-speed tungsten pellets. 
The analysis found that civilians were killed as far as 50 meters from the points of detonation and that damage extended substantially farther.
Baghaei described the attack as more than an isolated act of destruction.
He said the investigation has established that a prohibited weapon has been used and that the targets were civilian. The combination, he said, constitutes a war crime.
Iran has also sought to preserve physical evidence from the attack, including fragments and pellets recovered from the scene. Iranian health officials have separately examined the effects of the weapons, while Iranian authorities have said they are documenting the attack for future legal proceedings.
Baghaei said Iran will “seriously pursue justice” for the victims of Lamerd and use every opportunity to explain the crime so that the international community will join Iran in demanding justice for those killed.
The attack violated the basic principle that civilians must not be deliberately targeted and that weapons prohibited under international humanitarian law cannot be used against civilian populations.
But in Lamerd, those legal principles have a human face. It is the face of a two-year-old child. It is the wounded bodies of boys who were playing football.
It is the families who returned to homes pierced by thousands of metal pellets. It is the damaged buildings, the shattered windows and the holes left across structures and vehicles. And it is the survivors who still carry fragments of the attack inside their bodies.
That evidence leaves no justification for silence.
“Indifference to crime, injustice and oppression will certainly not be the last example of crime,” Baghaei said, stating that silence in the face of such acts only creates the conditions for further violations.
Lamerd is therefore more than a site of mourning. It is a crime scene.
It is also a warning of what happens when the United States brings a new generation of weapons into the war — and civilians become the victims.
Iran has vowed to document the attack, preserve the evidence and pursue those responsible through legal channels.
The residents of Lamerd have already preserved their own record. They have the scars. They have the fragments. They have the photographs. And they have the names of the dead.
What remains, Iranian officials say, is to ensure that the perpetrators and those who ordered the attack cannot escape accountability.