The school day had started as usual, Amaineh says.

As it was the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the children gathered inside the prayer room to recite the Quran, he recalls, before beginning to teach his students a new letter of the Persian alphabet.

But as the first attacks of the war unfolded across Iran, he says the principal announced the school would close and teachers began contacting parents, urging them to pick up their children.

Only five of Amaineh’s 15 first-graders were left in their upstairs classroom, he says, when he first heard an explosion not far from the school. She says she was in the hallway and ran toward the children.

“Just when I was going to leave, a missile hit the school,” says Amaineh. “Something hit my head and my students’ heads; we all went flying.”

Then, he says, thick black smoke filled the classroom: “I couldn’t even see the students in my arms. We couldn’t breathe.”

She says she remembers hearing another explosion, as well as sounds of screaming, children crying, and then the school itself collapsing, “destroyed at once.”

“Blood was pouring out of me and the students,” he adds.