The US-Israeli strikes moved across Tehran, Shiraz, Sanandaj, Maragheh, Lamerd, Minab, Ahvaz, and Tabriz simultaneously, creating a geography of destruction.
Mahmoud Aslan
Tehran
07 March, 2026
THE NEW ARAB
By the morning of 6 March, the US-Israel war had reached a threshold that Iranian authorities described as the bloodiest single day for civilians since the first strikes began. Tehran woke to a sequence of powerful explosions rolling across its districts, the sky darkened by thick smoke rising from residential buildings, hospitals and markets.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Ismail Baghaei said that over the preceding five days, strikes had hit schools, hospitals, residential areas, relief centres, and historical and cultural sites, acts he described as flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.
Over 1,300 people have been killed in Iran so far.
What distinguished this day was not only the scale but the spread: the strikes moved across Tehran, Shiraz, Sanandaj, Maragheh, Lamerd, Minab, Ahvaz, and Tabriz simultaneously, producing a geography of destruction that no emergency system was built to absorb at once.
In southern Tehran, strikes hit the densely populated Niloofar Square, killing more than twenty civilians including women and children. In Narmark district, families descended into basements and underground car parks as buildings shook and sirens cut through the morning without pause.
Yasir al-Qazvini, 38, an academic at the University of Tehran, was near Niloofar Square when the strike landed.
"The rubble covered the streets and people were running with no clear direction, carrying the wounded on their shoulders, while drones circled above the city," al-Qazvini described to The New Arab.
Around him, he said, "the screaming of children and women mixed with the sound of the explosions, as if the entire city was living in a continuous state of panic."
He walked out onto a main street. "The damaged houses were scattered around me, the shattered windows exposing the contents of homes destroyed completely. People were sitting on pavements trying to calm their children, while ambulances arrived late because the roads were broken and blocked with rubble," he said.
The hospitals could not keep pace.
"The medical staff at Gandhi and Khatam al-Anbia were working without stopping, trying to deal with hundreds of casualties in a very short time," al-Qazvini said.
Gandhi Hospital, Khatam al-Anbia, Motahhari, Vali Asr, the Trauma and Burns Hospital, and Shahid Rajaei Heart Hospital all sustained direct damage or were overwhelmed beyond capacity. Schools including Shahid Mahallati Primary School and Hedayat School in Narmark became makeshift shelters for the displaced. The Amena Neonatal Care Centre was also struck.
Nasrin Hosseini, an activist from Narmark, was in her neighbourhood when the explosions began.
"What followed was a violent blast near the building that shook the walls and sent the children into screaming panic," Hosseini said.
In the streets, she said, "the scene was devastating: families running carrying their children, some carrying the wounded on their shoulders, while others tried to protect their homes from flying debris. Ambulances could not get through quickly, and the wounded waited on pavements or in the shade."
The children, she said, did not understand what was happening, adding,"But the fear in their eyes drove us adults to move fast, to find any protection we could."
The health centre where she works filled with casualties, saying, "The medical teams worked without stopping, with shortages of medicine and equipment that worsened as the hours passed."
Alireza Majidi, a researcher at the Bonyan Centre for Political Studies, tracked the strikes from inside the capital through the morning.
"The residents were trying to survive, carrying the wounded, dragging children away from the destruction, while the bombardment continued at short intervals, without mercy. Workplaces closed. Schools stopped. Hospitals filled immediately," Majidi said.
In Narmark, he said, "families were running between damaged buildings searching for any safe place. The children were screaming, the women were wailing, the men were trying to protect their families. Even public transport stopped. The streets were full of rubble and wreckage."
What he saw, he said, made the intent unmistakable, saying, "It was clear that these were not isolated military strikes but part of a broader strategy to paralyse the major cities and spread terror among civilians."
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Qom: smoke above the families
In Qom, Iran's foremost religious centre, strikes hit the city's outskirts and sent smoke rising above neighbourhoods crowded with young families. Shops closed. Residents stayed indoors or moved in small, quiet groups.
Ruhollah Razavi, an activist based in Qom, watched from his balcony as the columns of smoke rose from a nearby district.
"The streets were almost empty of movement, except for some neighbours who rushed to help the wounded and take them to medical centres. Children were crying, women were screaming searching for their loved ones, while fear seemed to have frozen on everyone's faces," Razavi told TNA.
Phone lines went down across large parts of the city. A few metres from his home, rockets struck a densely populated residential area, shattering windows and filling the neighbourhood with smoke and the smell of fire.
"I and some neighbours tried to gather families in the basements, but the explosions were continuous, there was no time to think or plan," Razavi added.
The scene, he said, was unlike anything he had expected to witness at home, saying, "It resembled what I used to see in news reports from conflict zones abroad. Seeing it with my own eyes, in my own city, gave me a deep feeling of helplessness."
A neighbour arrived carrying an injured child, blood covering the small body, the mother's screaming rising above the sound of the explosions.
"I felt completely powerless. There was no nearby hospital that could receive all the wounded, and the ambulances were not enough," Razavi concluded.
Related
Shiraz, Lamerd and Fars province
Hundreds of kilometres south of the capital, Shiraz experienced a sudden quiet before explosions near military bases and warehouses killed dozens of civilians and wounded hundreds more. The city's main market was struck by shrapnel. Schools and public facilities closed immediately.
In Lamerd, in Fars province, an airstrike hit a sports hall, killing 18 children and teenagers. Thirty-five more civilians were killed in separate strikes across the province.
In Minab, a primary school was struck directly. Staff managed to evacuate some children before the drone arrived, but most of the building was destroyed. Hazrat Abu al-Fadl Hospital in the same province sustained damage, forcing medical teams to manage the emergency ward under conditions of acute shortage.
Sanandaj and Maragheh, Ahvaz and Tabriz
In Sanandaj, strikes hit a densely populated residential complex, killing civilians and causing severe structural damage. In Maragheh, more than 27 people were killed. Residents rushed to carry the wounded to field hospitals, trying to shield children and women from the next wave.
In Ahvaz, Abu Dhar Hospital and Baqaei Hospital were both struck. Civilians trying to reach the city's hospitals found streets crowded with the displaced. In Tabriz, a series of explosions near military sites sent residents fleeing toward the city's outskirts in search of relative safety.
The Arg fortress and Golestan Palace in southern Tehran sustained damage. The Grand Bazaar in Tehran and Baharestan Square market were partially destroyed. Medical relief centres and children's parks were struck. The diplomatic police headquarters was hit twice.
By the morning of 6 March, the US-Israel war had reached a threshold that Iranian authorities described as the bloodiest single day for civilians since the first strikes began. Tehran woke to a sequence of powerful explosions rolling across its districts, the sky darkened by thick smoke rising from residential buildings, hospitals and markets.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Ismail Baghaei said that over the preceding five days, strikes had hit schools, hospitals, residential areas, relief centres, and historical and cultural sites, acts he described as flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.
Over 1,300 people have been killed in Iran so far.
What distinguished this day was not only the scale but the spread: the strikes moved across Tehran, Shiraz, Sanandaj, Maragheh, Lamerd, Minab, Ahvaz, and Tabriz simultaneously, producing a geography of destruction that no emergency system was built to absorb at once.
In southern Tehran, strikes hit the densely populated Niloofar Square, killing more than twenty civilians including women and children. In Narmark district, families descended into basements and underground car parks as buildings shook and sirens cut through the morning without pause.
Yasir al-Qazvini, 38, an academic at the University of Tehran, was near Niloofar Square when the strike landed.
"The rubble covered the streets and people were running with no clear direction, carrying the wounded on their shoulders, while drones circled above the city," al-Qazvini described to The New Arab.
Around him, he said, "the screaming of children and women mixed with the sound of the explosions, as if the entire city was living in a continuous state of panic."
He walked out onto a main street. "The damaged houses were scattered around me, the shattered windows exposing the contents of homes destroyed completely. People were sitting on pavements trying to calm their children, while ambulances arrived late because the roads were broken and blocked with rubble," he said.
The hospitals could not keep pace.
"The medical staff at Gandhi and Khatam al-Anbia were working without stopping, trying to deal with hundreds of casualties in a very short time," al-Qazvini said.
Gandhi Hospital, Khatam al-Anbia, Motahhari, Vali Asr, the Trauma and Burns Hospital, and Shahid Rajaei Heart Hospital all sustained direct damage or were overwhelmed beyond capacity. Schools including Shahid Mahallati Primary School and Hedayat School in Narmark became makeshift shelters for the displaced. The Amena Neonatal Care Centre was also struck.
Nasrin Hosseini, an activist from Narmark, was in her neighbourhood when the explosions began.
"What followed was a violent blast near the building that shook the walls and sent the children into screaming panic," Hosseini said.
In the streets, she said, "the scene was devastating: families running carrying their children, some carrying the wounded on their shoulders, while others tried to protect their homes from flying debris. Ambulances could not get through quickly, and the wounded waited on pavements or in the shade."
The children, she said, did not understand what was happening, adding,"But the fear in their eyes drove us adults to move fast, to find any protection we could."
The health centre where she works filled with casualties, saying, "The medical teams worked without stopping, with shortages of medicine and equipment that worsened as the hours passed."
Alireza Majidi, a researcher at the Bonyan Centre for Political Studies, tracked the strikes from inside the capital through the morning.
"The residents were trying to survive, carrying the wounded, dragging children away from the destruction, while the bombardment continued at short intervals, without mercy. Workplaces closed. Schools stopped. Hospitals filled immediately," Majidi said.
In Narmark, he said, "families were running between damaged buildings searching for any safe place. The children were screaming, the women were wailing, the men were trying to protect their families. Even public transport stopped. The streets were full of rubble and wreckage."
What he saw, he said, made the intent unmistakable, saying, "It was clear that these were not isolated military strikes but part of a broader strategy to paralyse the major cities and spread terror among civilians."
Subscribe now to The Weekly Roundup
Qom: smoke above the families
In Qom, Iran's foremost religious centre, strikes hit the city's outskirts and sent smoke rising above neighbourhoods crowded with young families. Shops closed. Residents stayed indoors or moved in small, quiet groups.
Ruhollah Razavi, an activist based in Qom, watched from his balcony as the columns of smoke rose from a nearby district.
"The streets were almost empty of movement, except for some neighbours who rushed to help the wounded and take them to medical centres. Children were crying, women were screaming searching for their loved ones, while fear seemed to have frozen on everyone's faces," Razavi told TNA.
Phone lines went down across large parts of the city. A few metres from his home, rockets struck a densely populated residential area, shattering windows and filling the neighbourhood with smoke and the smell of fire.
"I and some neighbours tried to gather families in the basements, but the explosions were continuous, there was no time to think or plan," Razavi added.
The scene, he said, was unlike anything he had expected to witness at home, saying, "It resembled what I used to see in news reports from conflict zones abroad. Seeing it with my own eyes, in my own city, gave me a deep feeling of helplessness."
A neighbour arrived carrying an injured child, blood covering the small body, the mother's screaming rising above the sound of the explosions.
"I felt completely powerless. There was no nearby hospital that could receive all the wounded, and the ambulances were not enough," Razavi concluded.
Related
Shiraz, Lamerd and Fars province
Hundreds of kilometres south of the capital, Shiraz experienced a sudden quiet before explosions near military bases and warehouses killed dozens of civilians and wounded hundreds more. The city's main market was struck by shrapnel. Schools and public facilities closed immediately.
In Lamerd, in Fars province, an airstrike hit a sports hall, killing 18 children and teenagers. Thirty-five more civilians were killed in separate strikes across the province.
In Minab, a primary school was struck directly. Staff managed to evacuate some children before the drone arrived, but most of the building was destroyed. Hazrat Abu al-Fadl Hospital in the same province sustained damage, forcing medical teams to manage the emergency ward under conditions of acute shortage.
Sanandaj and Maragheh, Ahvaz and Tabriz
In Sanandaj, strikes hit a densely populated residential complex, killing civilians and causing severe structural damage. In Maragheh, more than 27 people were killed. Residents rushed to carry the wounded to field hospitals, trying to shield children and women from the next wave.
In Ahvaz, Abu Dhar Hospital and Baqaei Hospital were both struck. Civilians trying to reach the city's hospitals found streets crowded with the displaced. In Tabriz, a series of explosions near military sites sent residents fleeing toward the city's outskirts in search of relative safety.
The Arg fortress and Golestan Palace in southern Tehran sustained damage. The Grand Bazaar in Tehran and Baharestan Square market were partially destroyed. Medical relief centres and children's parks were struck. The diplomatic police headquarters was hit twice.
Expanding beyond borders
Iran launched missiles and drones against American and Israeli targets across the region under the operation it named "Truthful Promise 4". Tehran stated that its response would continue for as long as strikes on Iranian civilians and cities continued.
The United States and Israel maintained that their operations targeted military infrastructure. President Trump called for Iran's "unconditional surrender", while Israel announced what it called "a new phase" of operations.
Seven days in, the strikes have produced a civilian landscape of basements used as shelters, schools converted into displacement centres, and hospitals working beyond capacity with shrinking supplies. Electricity and water networks have failed across parts of multiple provinces. Communications have been cut in entire districts.
Alireza Majidi did not end the day with analysis. He ended it with a sentence that needed none: "The war is no longer a distant abstraction for civilians. It has become a daily reality lived by every Iranian citizen, and its deep impact on mental health and society as a whole will be felt for decades."
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.
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