It has been reported that poor areas in Iran where people of African descent live have been among those first harmed. Others live there, too. It is not known how many of the girls killed at the bombed school were of African descent, but they were God’s children, and many were poor. This is a heavily documented and actively unfolding story.
What is confirmed across multiple major investigations: On Feb. 28, 2026 — the first day of the war — the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the Shahrak-e Al-Mahdi neighborhood of Minab, Hormozgan province in southern Iran was destroyed by a missile strike. According to Iranian state media, at least 175 people were killed, more than 100 of them schoolchildren. That is a tragedy no matter what their background was.
The school was attended by a mix of children from military families and locals drawn by low tuition fees — some from the town of Minab itself, and others from outside. The fact that tuition was low suggests many of the girls came from poor families. That would not be surprising.
The people of Minab are a braided population — Arab, Persian, Baloch, and descendants of African traders who sailed the ancient Indian Ocean routes — and they speak Bandari, a dialect shaped by centuries of Gulf coast influence. That history makes it likely that some of the girls killed were of African descent, and our hearts go out to all their families regardless of their background.
Amnesty International, which interviewed a teacher in Minab and a Baluchi human rights defender, found that the victims included children of military personnel and low-income families from the area, among them members of Iran’s historically oppressed Baluchi ethnic minority. The Afro-Iranian community in Hormozgan — descendants of Africans brought to the region through the Gulf trade — is real and historically documented, though the full demographic makeup of the school’s population has not been independently confirmed.
I would not support killing even the daughters of Islamic Revolutionary Guard members, because children do not deserve to have their lives taken because adults are acting without regard for the sanctity of life. How does a president tell the people he represents that the federal government exists only for military protection — not Medicaid, Medicare, or child care — and then suggest that states simply raise their taxes to cover the rest? It is easy to dismiss the things American families depend on — education, health care, the basic necessities of life — when you are not the one going without. Trump and Hegseth are acting like kids playing games.
This war does not have the support of the American people or their representatives in Congress, who were not consulted. People still struggling to buy gas to get to work, to put food on the table, to send their children to college or afford a decent home did not vote for a man who governs as though his only job is to wage war while dismantling the things families need to survive.
May God help our country and protect us from our so-called leaders. Thanks to Pope Leo for speaking out against war. It is not for our monetary gain.
Williams is president of The Dick Gregory Society (www.thedickgregorysociety.org).