It began like any traditional wedding in southern Iran. The women arrived with their hands elaborately decorated with henna. Children played in the courtyard. A festive meal was about to be served in a room draped with carpets and pillows.
It ended when a bomb brought down the roof, turning a night of celebration into a jumble of dust-coated sandals, torn garlands and blood-soaked rugs.
Dozens of guests, according to a witness and local news outlets, had already arrived at the Malahi family’s home and surrounding buildings in the southern city of Kuhestak to celebrate a young bride and groom.
At around 9.30pm on Tuesday, the wedding was struck by a bomb that, according to a weapons expert, had been released by US forces as they carried out intense attacks in southern Iran. At least five wedding guests were killed, including a 6-year-old boy, and at least 67 other people were wounded, according to Iran’s Red Crescent Society, a humanitarian aid group.
Among the guests was a woman named Motahareh. The night of the wedding, she posted a selfie on Instagram from the women’s henna party the night before – beaming in perfectly applied make-up, a lilac headscarf and flowery robe.
“Last night was the first night!” she wrote. “For the coming nights, should I make these sorts of stories for you or what!!!”
In her next post, uploaded within an hour of the attack, Motahareh is in the same lilac scarf – but now her eyes are smeared with black make-up, her face covered in red blotches.
“Tonight was supposed to be a night of love and laughter,” Motahareh wrote. “But the wedding turned into mourning, and a sweet night will forever be bitter.”
A video of the immediate aftermath of the strike showed the chaotic scene of neighbourhood residents rushing between damaged buildings with flashlights as emergency medical workers tried to douse the area with a hose.
Kuhestak, a port city, is close to the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The attack came as US forces said they were retaliating against Iranian attacks on ships and US forces in the region. US Central Command said it had struck communication sites, along with other locations it said were operated by Iran’s armed forces, which include the Revolutionary Guard.
The attacks on Kuhestak hit a large communications tower near the town’s port. After the tower was struck, it crashed across a street toward a corner store and residential buildings, photos and a video verified by The New York Times showed.
Another attack hit a building in the residential area where the wedding was being held, around 150 yards from the communications tower, according to the accounts of multiple residents, local officials and videos that were posted by witnesses and verified by the Times.
The New York Times collected videos of weapon remnants filmed after the attacks on Kuhestak and shared them with Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician and an analyst at Armament Research Services. He identified the remnants as components of a glide bomb, which is used by US Central Command and not used by Iran’s forces.
Asked about the attack on the wedding and the munitions, Central Command spokesperson Capt Tim Hawkins of the US Navy said: “We are aware of reports, which originated from Iranian state media. The US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” using an acronym for the Revolutionary Guard.
Iranian officials have called the attack a war crime, and Iran’s Red Crescent Society said its head had asked the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to investigate the episode.
In the small towns of southern Iran, weddings are traditionally held in people’s homes, as was the case with the Malahi family. Weddings become a neighbourhood event, with men and women gathering in separate houses. The attacks appear to have hit one of the buildings where the wedding was held.
Hamid Kasiri, a teacher, and other witnesses posted videos of the gaping hole in the roof of one building, which Iranian officials said had been directly hit by a US strike. Concrete walls were punctured, doors were shattered, ceilings collapsed and debris was strewn across the area.
The attack on Kuhestak is the fourth episode in which strikes on structures with no military use were hit, and civilians were killed. On February 28th, the first day of the US-Israeli war in Iran, a US Tomahawk missile hit an elementary school in Minab, killing civilians, most of them children, Iranian officials said.
Hours later, the United States used several PrSM missiles to strike near a residential area in Lamerd, killing 21, Iranian officials said. In July, the United States used a 2,000-pound bomb to strike a home in Qeshm Island, killing three civilians, according to Iranian officials.
Among those killed in the Kuhestak attack was Amir-Muhammad Karimi, an exuberant six-year-old who was starting preschool, according to an interview given by his mother to the Red Crescent and published on the group’s official page.
His mother, whose name the Red Crescent did not publish, said her son had been so excited to attend the wedding that he had gone in ahead of her with his 14-year-old sister, Kiana. When she heard explosions, the mother said, she ran into the streets to search for her children and found them covered with dust and shrapnel.
A local photographer named Kian said in an interview that he had been at home about 500 yards from the Malahi family’s house when he heard a strange sound. “Almost like a whistle, a whistle coming from the direction of the sea,” he said. When the bomb struck, he said, “we all heard the explosion.”
Electricity and mobile phone connections went down. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder. He could hear screams and crying as he headed toward the Malahi house, recounted Kian, who spoke on the condition that his last name be withheld out of fear of government reprisal.
“People were carrying small children in their arms,” he said, “trying to get them to the hospital in pickup trucks and any vehicles they could find.”
Kian said the bomb had struck the section of the wedding set aside for women. “That is why most of those injured are women and children,” he said.
Later that night, Kian said he was with the father and brother of one of the people killed, Muhammad Malahi (16). The teenager was so badly disfigured, he said, that they used the mobile phone found on his body to confirm it was him.
The Fars News Agency, a semi-official outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, identified two others killed: Kolsoum Malahi Najandnia (43) and Zarkhatoun Taheri (50).
The bride and groom survived the attack, Motahareh, the wedding guest, said in her post.
Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers Law School, said the US military must address the attack “because on its face it seems inexplicable and indefensible”. There was no indication of any military target around the building, he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.