On September 1, as the sounds of celebration and ululation rose from a gathering of people at peace in a home whose rooms had been filled with joy in the “Kohestak” area of Sirik District, Hormozgan Province, southern Iran, everything suddenly turned upside down. There were no longer juices, sweets, or voices filled with happiness. Instead, blood filled the place, and the details of joy disappeared from people’s faces, replaced by the details of catastrophe. Another American tragedy turned a wedding into a funeral and tranquility into chaos, following a treacherous airstrike carried out by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) against a marriage ceremony attended by family members and loved ones.
In 1949, the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols categorically prohibited the targeting of civilian gatherings and objects. Yet the military conduct of the American axis and its allies has, over decades, demonstrated a recurring pattern that crosses these red lines, deliberately and with prior intent turning wedding halls and social gatherings into scenes of massacres.
A Methodology of Shedding the Blood of Children and Women
From Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, and then Iran, these practices reflect the same military doctrine based on overwhelming air superiority, without regard for the humanitarian principles governing warfare and agreed upon by all states. In this context, the massacre at a wedding ceremony in the Kohestak area of Iran’s Hormozgan Province brings back to mind the series of replicated military practices carried out by the Saudi-American coalition in Yemen throughout the years of aggression.
In the Kohestak massacre in Hormozgan, four people were killed, including a child and a woman, while more than 68 people were wounded, including 15 children and a number of women. The damage also extended to widespread destruction inflicted on neighboring residential homes. The attack caused a complete disruption of communications networks and electricity supplies as a result of damage to infrastructure and the main stations in the area.
The Deputy Governor of Hormozgan described the attack as a deliberate war crime against civilians. Meanwhile, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf launched a fierce attack on the U.S. administration, considering the crime part of a long series of historical violations against civilians. Ghalibaf stressed that when a military power acts through the shedding of the blood of children and women, it strips itself of any moral dimension, invoking the political literature of the Islamic Republic, which describes Washington as the “Greatest Satan.”
In response, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) swiftly denied intentionally targeting civilians, claiming that the strikes were directed against targets belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in response to threats to navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. However, the repetition of this rhetoric, which seeks to justify what Washington describes as “accidental tactical errors,” is no longer sufficient to convince international organizations and global public opinion in the face of the scale of documented human losses.
The Repeated Replication of Targeting Wedding Halls
The tactics witnessed in Hormozgan closely mirror the military pattern employed by the Saudi-American coalition in Yemen throughout the years of aggression, when wedding halls and mourning gatherings became recurring targets of airstrikes. International and local organizations have documented dozens of airstrikes that struck public halls and inhabited homes while weddings or mourning gatherings were taking place.
This series began in the early days of the aggression in March 2015 with the massacre in the Bani Hawat neighborhood near Sana’a Airport, in which around 25 civilians were killed in an area where social gatherings were taking place. This was followed in October 2015 by the bombing of a wedding ceremony in Anss District, Dhamar Province, in the crime known as the “Sanban Wedding Massacre,” which resulted in dozens of women and children being killed and wounded.
On October 8, 2016, the capital Sana’a witnessed one of the bloodiest catastrophes, classified among the major crimes in the history of modern conflicts, when warplanes launched an intensive and double strike targeting the “Great Hall” as hundreds gathered for the mourning ceremony of the Al-Ruwaishan family. The successive attacks resulted in more than 140 people being killed and 600 others wounded, while the site was burned and surrounding vehicles destroyed.
The same pattern continued in February 2017 through the bombing of a women’s gathering at a wedding in Shiraa village in Arhab District, killing eight women and a child. This was followed by the April 2018 Bani Qais wedding massacre in Hajjah Province, which turned a civilian celebration in the Al-Raqah area into a funeral after dozens were killed and wounded.
The Repeated Pattern and the Historical Record
The Hormozgan massacre cannot be separated from the historical military record of U.S. operations over the past decades, as numerous international and human rights reports have documented similar crimes targeting social gatherings and weddings.
This pattern became particularly evident in Afghanistan in 2002, when a U.S. AC-130 aircraft bombed a wedding ceremony in the village of Kakarak in Uruzgan Province, killing 48 civilians and wounding dozens after celebratory gunfire was interpreted as a military action.
The tragedy was repeated in July 2008 with the targeting of a wedding procession in Haska Meyna, Nangarhar, killing 47 civilians, including the bride. Then, in November of the same year, the village of Wech Baghtu in Kandahar witnessed the killing of 40 civilians inside a residential compound where a wedding ceremony was being held. This was followed by the tragedy of Sangin in Helmand in 2014, when the sorrow surrounding yet another wedding was turned into a funeral that claimed the lives of 26 civilians.
Iraq was no stranger to this methodology. The massacre in the village of Makr al-Dhib, or Makar al-Dhib, in Anbar Province in May 2004 stands as one of the most horrific examples. An airstrike destroyed a desert wedding ceremony and killed more than 40 civilians, including women, children, and members of the musical group celebrating at the event. Leaked video footage exposed the falsity of official U.S. claims that the strike had targeted a “militant hideout.”
This was accompanied by scattered incidents in Fallujah and the outskirts of Baghdad between 2003 and 2004, resulting from the preemptive treatment of nighttime gatherings as potential targets.
Human rights organizations’ reports confirm that the repeated targeting of wedding halls and celebrations does not represent isolated technical errors, but rather reflects a systematic disregard for the principles of distinction and proportionality imposed by international humanitarian law, as well as a deliberate structural failure within intelligence and information-gathering systems that turns civilian gatherings into targets in the military operations bank.
International Responsibility and the Absence of Accountability
The analytical and field evidence demonstrates that the targeting of wedding halls and social gatherings—from Yemen to Iran and other countries—by the axis of Satan, and the resulting killing and wounding of thousands of civilians, goes beyond the assumption of “individual errors” or “collateral damage.” By virtue of its continuity, it becomes a methodology based on excessive force and disregard for the principles established under international humanitarian law, which require distinction, proportionality, and precaution before carrying out any airstrike.
Meanwhile, official responses limited to denying intent or promising internal investigations no longer absolve the forces responsible from international accountability before human rights bodies and the Security Council.
The international community and independent judicial institutions bear the responsibility of putting an end to the culture of impunity and activating accountability mechanisms to ensure that celebrations and civilian objects are not turned into cost-free arenas of killing and mourning.
