WANA (Apr 24) – It was 11:40 AM on the 1st of March. In the neonatal ward of Tehran’s Khatam-al-Anbiya Hospital, time was passing differently. Newborns, who had not yet completed an hour of their first breaths in this world, slept peacefully in the ward, with no conception of the sound of explosions or the conditions of war.

 

Their mothers, exhausted from an unequal battle to grant life in the midst of a conflict, were still in operating rooms or under intensive care.

 

In those days of war, becoming a mother in Iran was akin to a miracle in the heart of a storm. Enduring nine months of pregnancy while red sirens and the shadow of foreign threats loomed over the city was a burden beyond human strength.

 

For these women, these children were not just infants; they were symbols of “the continuation of life” in a country whose only crime was standing firm under the pressure of unjust attacks.

 

Neda Salimi, a nurse in the ward, was busy checking the vital signs of the little ones entrusted to her care when, suddenly, the ground beneath her feet screamed.

 

An explosion shattered the silence of the hospital—a place that, according to all humanitarian treaties, should have remained a “safe zone.” In an instant, the ceiling began to rain; not water, but chunks of concrete and shattered glass. Thick dust choked the air, and screams were lost amidst the sound of collapsing walls.

Footage showing the strike on Khatam-al-Anbiya Hospital, Tehran. Social media/ WANA News Agency

 

Amidst the violent shaking of the building, Neda was confronted with a stark truth. She could have sought shelter for her own life, but her gaze was locked onto the cribs that now lay under the shadow of death.

 

She knew that if these infants were harmed, it would not just be the loss of a life, but the severing of the final threads of hope for mothers who had endured months under the fear of bombardment.

 

Losing these children in an environment that should have been the safest place on earth would inflict an eternal wound on the hearts of families who had already paid a heavy price for a war they never wanted.

 

As the ward’s ceiling was collapsing, Neda ran toward the newborns. With hands trembling from shock but an iron will, she gathered the infants into her arms one after another.

 

She pressed three newborns to her chest and navigated through corridors filled with smoke and rubble. She did not head for the shelter; she knew that in those moments, a newborn belongs in its mother’s arms, and a mother belongs to the certainty that a piece of her soul is still alive.

A view of debris following an Israeli and U.S. strike on another hospital, Gandhi Hotel Hospital, amid the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 2, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)

Amidst the chaos of the hallways, Neda called out the mothers’ names loudly, her voice rising through sobs and dust. The moment of reunion was a vision of pure humanity.

 

Mothers who had emerged from the operating room with half-alive bodies, fearing that the war had stolen their final possession, suddenly saw a dust-covered angel returning their infants to them, safe and sound.

 

Neda Salimi’s tears flowed alongside the mothers in that moment; not out of fear of death, but for the touch of life once more in a place that was meant to be turned into a pile of ash. She later said, “I was only a trustee.” But to those mothers and in the memory of history, she was a woman who, in the face of the brutal assault on a “sanctuary for the sick,” built a new roof of security with her own embrace.

 

The United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, 2026, and assassinated a number of Iran’s senior commanders and the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei. In response to these attacks, Iran carried out retaliatory strikes, attacking Israel and American military bases in countries from which the attacks on Iran had originated, in 100 waves during Operation True Promise 4.

 

According to the head of Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization, the final death toll of the conflicts from the start of the war until April 10 was 3,375 people, including 2,875 men and 496 women.

 

And according to the head of Iran’s Emergency Medical Services, 118 members of the medical staff were injured, and 26 were killed during the recent war.

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