The air at the bombed-out Tehran hospital room hung thick with dust and the metallic tang of recent destruction carried out by the United States and the Israeli regime.
Against a backdrop of shattered concrete, two newborns clung precariously to life. Their breaths were being measured by the rhythmic beep of monitors connected by vital wires.
Amid the dust-choked room following the dastardly US-Israeli aggression, Iranian Red Crescent personnel worked to sever the fragile connection to the damaged infrastructure, to take the infants out of the wreckage.
The Gandhi Hospital in central Tehran, along with a nearby residential building, sustained catastrophic damage from strikes carried out by the United States and Israel late Sunday night, a day after the aggression was launched without provocation.
Immediately following the attack, harrowing footage depicted medical personnel urgently transferring the tiny newborns from their compromised incubators to ambulances.
Hope for new life, IVF centre targeted
The tragedy deepened with confirmation from hospital authorities later about the massive damage incurred by a specialized IVF center there, which lay in ruins.
The IVF centre was a sanctuary where hundreds of hopeful couples had invested their futures, their deepest desires for parenthood.
The US-Israeli aggression destroyed their dreams for future generations that had been painstakingly planned.
“The ledger of violated human rights in this war will be written in blood and shame,” Hossein Kermanpour, Health Ministry spokesman, wrote in a post on his X account.
“For the first time in my life, I am witnessing something I never even saw during the Iran-Iraq War. Patients being carried in their caregivers’ arms, fleeing into smoke-filled streets after missiles exploded beside their hospital,” Kermanpour added.
The assault was not limited to Gandhi Hospital. Reports confirmed that Khatam al-Anbiya Hospital and Motahari Hospital were also directly targeted in Tehran.
Furthermore, several missiles struck near Abuzar Hospital in the southern city of Ahvaz, forcing the immediate evacuation of 21 patients, including those in intensive care, requiring 30 ambulances to reroute them to other centers.
Images from Ahvaz captured the evacuation under dire circumstances. Emergency personnel were moving the sick through the thick plumes of smoke while the terrifying sounds of aerial bombardment still echoed overhead.
The American and Israeli regimes also targeted three emergency medical bases in Sarab, Chabahar, and Hamedan following the Abuzar attack.
A member of the Iranian Parliament said five hospitals and medical centers have been damaged or destroyed during the US-Israeli terrorist attacks on the Islamic Republic.
“Unfortunately, this illegal act of aggression resulted not only in the destruction of the buildings of hospitals and medical centers but also the injury of a number of students and local residents,” Fatemeh Mohammad Beigi, a member of the Parliament’s Health and Treatment Commission, said in a statement on Monday.
She added that a number of these medical centers have been evacuated in fear of more attacks.
Assault on life itself
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian denounced the US-Israeli strikes on civilian infrastructure, stating that the attacks on medical facilities “affect life itself and assaults on educational centers jeopardize the future of a nation.”
He made this reference following a US-Israeli strike on an elementary school in the southern Hormozgan Province that killed 171 girls.
He added that “targeting patients and children blatantly violates humanitarian principles.”
The Iranian president called upon the international community to censure the atrocities.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed extreme concern over the damage to Gandhi Hospital in Tehran.
Following the bombing, he posted on X, stating, “Reports of Tehran’s Gandhi Hospital being damaged during today’s bombardment of the Iranian capital are extremely worrying.”
Ghebreyesus reiterated that “all efforts must be taken to prevent health facilities from being caught up in the ongoing conflict,” emphasizing that “Health facilities are protected under international humanitarian law” with the hashtag “#healthisnotatarget.”
Strike on hospitals, a pattern
However, this event is part of a disturbing pattern. This is not the first time Israel has attacked medical facilities in the Islamic Republic. During the 12-day military aggression in June, nearly a dozen hospitals were targeted in clear violation of international conventions.
The Geneva Conventions, long considered the bedrock of humanitarian protection in wartime, have been repeatedly flouted by both the US and Israel.
In Gaza, an entire health system has been systematically crippled, and doctors have been killed while on duty since the genocidal war was launched in October 2023.
According to chilling WHO figures, 94 percent of hospitals in Gaza were destroyed by Israel during its two-year-long genocide.
