‘They turned a wedding into a funeral’: Iran condemns US strike near Sirik
text_fields
Tehran has accused the United States of turning a wedding celebration into a funeral after a strike in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province killed at least five people and injured dozens, many of them women and children. Iran’s embassy in India, posting on X on Wednesday, 2 September, described a scene of devastation, saying flowers from the ceremony lay scattered on the ground and the bride’s white dress was stained with blood. “They turned a wedding into a funeral,” the embassy said, adding that Tehran would neither forget the incident nor leave it unanswered.
Iranian authorities said the attack hit a residential home in Kuhestak, in Sirik county, where a wedding was under way. The Iranian Red Crescent initially reported four deaths, including a child, and more than 50 injured; later updates from state media and provincial officials put the death toll at five and the number of wounded at 63 to 68, with a large proportion described as women and children. A widely shared video on social media purported to show extensive damage to buildings and debris strewn across the site, reinforcing claims of heavy civilian casualties.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said more than 50 men, women and children had been killed or wounded in what he called part of a wider “chain of atrocities” against Iran, linking the Sirik strike to earlier attacks in Minab, Lamerd, Qeshm and other locations. He warned against attempts to justify strikes on military targets while ignoring civilian deaths, accusing some governments and international bodies of treating silence as legitimacy and normalising bombing. “Iran will respond to these savage crimes with firmness,” Baghaei said.
The reported civilian toll came as Washington and Tehran entered a fresh phase of military escalation. US Central Command said its forces carried out strikes on Tuesday evening, 1 September, against sites belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including air defence positions, radar systems, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications facilities. Explosions were reported in several southern locations, among them Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, Chabahar, Konarak, Sirik and Minab, while Iranian state television also said Jiroft Airport in Kerman province was hit.
US President Donald Trump said American forces were acting near the Strait of Hormuz in response to what he described as an Iranian attempt to lay naval mines in the strategic waterway, and warned of harsher measures if Tehran retaliated. Iranian media and officials, meanwhile, said the country had already launched retaliatory strikes against US military bases in the region, framing the Sirik wedding attack as further justification for a firm response.