Prof Sanjukta reflects on the Shajareh Tayyebeh massacre and chronicles the aftermath and witnesses’ enduring grief in DifferentTruths.com
Like every school day morning,
They smiled and giggled as they
Entered their classrooms
Their teachers were telling them
Funny stories, also telling them
Numbers were as important as words
In their Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school
Teachers and students read, wrote, laughed, and played
Not knowing their names, they would soon become numbers
On that fateful day on February 28, 2026,
Death dropped out of the morning sky
A lethal Tomahawk BGM-109 silenced them forever
Their beloved school, now a heap of rubble
Flattened out of existence
Scattered fragments of children’s bodies
Lay everywhere; the small coffins
Tenderly carried the scooped-up remains
The world watched, its rhetoric, ‘visceral horror’
Seemed absurd, a damp squib
No one would ever forget or forgive
As the cries of children spiral in the air
Day and night, every day, every night since then.
No one, no human, would sleep anymore.
Notes: Key details of the February 28, 2026, Minab School Attack.
Target: Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ Elementary School in the Shahrak-e Al-Mahdi neighbourhood of Minab, Hormozgan province, southern Iran.
Casualties: At least 165–175 killed, with over 100 children aged 7–12, and nearly 100 injured.
Photos designed by AI
[1] Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 11, Scene 11
Dr Sanjukta Dasgupta is a poet, short story writer, critic, and translator. She was a General Council of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, member and the Convenor English Advisory Board Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. She is the President of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata and has twenty-six published books. Her poems have been translated into German, Serbian, Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, and Tamil.
By
By
By
By