TEHRAN — Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani stated on Wednesday that more than 30 civilians have lost their lives in recent US strikes targeting southern Iran. In a statement published on the social media platform X, Mohajerani expressed her deepest condolences to the victims' families and pledged full government support for the affected communities in the region.

The United States has carried out several waves of intense airstrikes on Iran's southern regions in recent days. While Washington maintains that these operations are strictly aimed at "degrading Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping" in the vital Strait of Hormuz, the rising civilian death toll directly contradicts these claims.

The renewed US bombardment represents a flagrant violation of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed electronically on June 17 by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and US President Donald Trump. The Islamabad MoU explicitly demanded a permanent end to hostilities on all fronts and committed both sides to final peace negotiations within a 60-day window. US forces launched these bombings after Trump abruptly declared that the June agreement was "over".

The June MoU was originally engineered to preserve the April 8 ceasefire, which temporarily paused the joint US and Israeli war on Iran that erupted on February 28. According to official data, nearly 3,500 people have been killed in Iran since the outbreak of the war, roughly half of whom are confirmed to be civilians.

The catastrophic human cost of Washington's military campaign was set on the very first day of the war, marked by a tragic US missile strike on an elementary school in the southern city of Minab. The attack killed 168 people, the vast majority of them school children. While US media outlets later acknowledged that an American Tomahawk cruise missile was responsible for obliterating the school, Washington has faced severe international criticism for failing to ensure accountability or alter its targeting parameters to protect innocent lives. Critics argue that the Minab school disaster, paired with the recent deaths of 30 more civilians in the south, underscores a reckless disregard for international humanitarian law and exposes the empty nature of Washington's "precision striking" rhetoric.