Inside Iran's children's wards: The painful human cost of US

Israel and America are calling their airstrikes precision-targeted.

The term often loses most of its meaning when you see the impact on the ground.

International affairs editor @DominicWaghorn
Tuesday 17 March 2026 22:07, UK
The human cost of Israel and America's air campaign on Iran is mounting, nowhere more painfully felt than in the children's wards of its hospitals.

Her mother Zeiba was in torment, clutching her tiny hand and begging her to wake up.

Doctors say she almost certainly never will.

Image: Zeiba holds the hand of four-year-old Anita
Later, I asked her if she had a message for Donald Trump about this war.

"Why did this happen to us?" she said, pausing to let out her tears.

"To innocent people, my innocent four-year-old girl, who was only going downstairs to come to me, why do it to ordinary people like us?

Anita had been playing with her 14-year-old brother and was coming down the stairs, answering their mother's call, when the missile came in.

Image: Anita's 14-year-old brother
It was terrifying, he told us: "Suddenly, everywhere went black.

I didn't understand what happened next.

I didn't hear a sound, nothing… I thought I was dreaming."
Civilians are being hurt in the air campaign here because some airstrikes are being used on targets in residential areas.

That is abundantly clear in places like Resalat in eastern Tehran.

Here, missiles have devastated a huge area the size of a city block.

There was a Basij or paramilitary security force base here, say residents, but civilian apartments too, many of them.

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35-year-old Seyedeh Farideh's body was pulled out of the rubble and identified three days later.

Read more: Tehran is dotted with the scars of war Voters split on Starmer's Iran stance
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Seyed had this message for the leader of whichever country sent the missiles: "I wish the same thing would happen to them that they would have to identify the body of their youth with their own hands.

Them and their families.

"Same as what I did to the body of my daughter after three days, I wish that for whoever caused this."
Israelis and Americans say their airstrikes are the best way of achieving their war aims, regime change among them.

But the longer they go on, the greater the human cost and anguish.