Iran embassy in Delhi displays drawings taken from rubble of school bombed by US

Drawings pulled from the rubble of a bombed school in Iran now hang on display inside the Iranian Embassy in the capital, turning a quiet exhibition into a stark reminder of a tragedy that shook the early days of the war.

Titled ‘Angels of Minab’, the exhibition features artwork created by children who were among those killed when an elementary school in Minab was struck on February 28 during joint US-Israel military operations.

More than 165 children and staff lost their lives in the attack.

In a post on X, the Embassy of Iran in New Delhi described the exhibition as a collection of pages “brought out from beneath the rubble of a school in Minab”.

“A school that was destroyed following a military attack by the US and the Zionist regime,” the Embassy said.

It added, “Pages that were recovered through the efforts of Red Crescent rescue teams, and have been restored only to the extent that they can be seen. The world depicted in them is still simple, bright, and trustworthy. But the world outside did not remain so.”

“Children, in no war, should be victims; yet in every war, many worlds collapse with their extinguishing.”

The exhibition is being seen as part of Iran’s broader attempt to draw attention to civilian suffering as the conflict deepens.

The Minab school strike has been described as one of the deadliest single incidents involving civilians in the early phase of the war, with children forming the majority of those killed.

The school stood less than 100 yards from an IRGC naval base, though records indicate it had been fully converted into a civilian educational facility years before the strike.

US officials have maintained the attack was unintended, calling it a case of misidentification rather than a deliberate strike on a civilian target.

The tragedy has also found its way into Iran’s diplomatic messaging.

Earlier, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf shared an image from inside an aircraft en route to Islamabad, where seats were lined with photographs of children killed in the Minab strike, alongside backpacks and roses.

“My companions on this flight, Minab 168,” he wrote, invoking the number of victims in the attack.

The naming of the Iranian delegation as ‘Minab 168’ is being seen as both a tribute and a signal, a reminder of the human cost of the conflict as Tehran pushes for a diplomatic path forward.

Iran has pointed to a broader pattern of damage during the conflict, with hundreds of schools, universities and healthcare facilities affected over weeks of strikes.

The exhibition in New Delhi brings that reality into sharp focus, not through statistics, but through drawings once made by children whose lives were cut short.

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