LONDON: Iranians have reacted angrily to comments made by the country’s education minister Mohammad Bathaee about the regime’s willingness to send schoolchildren to war.
In a speech on May 10, Bathaie said: “We have 14 million students in school, and they are willing to sacrifice their lives if we need them, such as in the period of the sacred defense,” making a reference to the Iran-Iraq War.
The Iranian Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child condemned the minister's statements.
And Iranians also took to social media to vent their anger at the comments. Prominent singer Zepa Murmalki said: “This is the minister in charge of educating the next generation of Iranians." Others claimed the minister’s own son had not performed military service.
Tensions between Iran and the US, and its Gulf allies, have been rising in recent weeks. The US has sent further military forces to the Middle East, including an aircraft carrier, B-52 bombers and Patriot missiles, in a show of force against what officials say are Iranian threats to its troops and its interests in the region.
It is not the first time Iran has been warned about the use of child soldiers. Human Rights Watch has consistently accused the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of sending children of Afghan refugees to fight in Syria.
And a report in UK newspaper the Mirror earlier this week revealed that Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have been accused of luring child soldiers to fight by giving them keys and promising them it is to “enter paradise” when they die in the country’s ongoing conflict.
In December 2018, a senior Houthi military official acknowledged to Associated Press that they had inducted 18,000 child soldiers into their army — some as young as 10-years-old — since the beginning of the Yemeni conflict in 2014.
Iranians react angrily to education minister comments on sending students into war
Iranians react angrily to education minister comments on sending students into war
Sudan drone attack on Darfur market kills 10: rescuers
- According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 50,000 civilians have fled the region since the end of October
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone attack on a busy market in Sudan’s North Darfur state killed 10 people over the weekend, first responders said on Sunday, without saying who was responsible.
The attack comes as fighting intensified elsewhere in the country, leading aid workers to be evacuated on Sunday from Kadugli, a besieged, famine-hit city in the south.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in a conflict which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
The North Darfur Emergency Rooms Council, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across Sudan, said a drone strike hit Al-Harra market in the RSF-controlled town of Malha on Saturday.
The attack killed 10 people, it said.
The council did not identify who carried out the attack, which it said had also sparked “fire in shops and caused extensive material damage.”
There was no immediate comment from either the Sudanese army or the RSF.
The war’s current focal point is now South Kordofan and clashes have escalated in Kadugli, the state capital, where a drone attack last week killed eight people as they attempted to flee the army-controlled city.
A source from a humanitarian organization operating in Kadugli told AFP on Sunday that humanitarian groups had “evacuated all their workers” from the city because of the security conditions.
The evacuation followed the United Nations’ decision to relocate its logistics hub from Kadugli, the source said on condition of anonymity, without specifying where the staff had gone.
- Measles outbreak -
Kadugli and nearby Dilling have been besieged by paramilitary forces since the war erupted.
Last week, the RSF claimed control of the Brno area, a key defensive line on the road between Kadugli and Dilling.
After dislodging the army in October from the western city of El-Fasher — its last stronghold in the Darfur region — the RSF has shifted its focus to resource-rich Kordofan, a strategic crossroads linking army-held northern and eastern territories with RSF-held Darfur in the west.
Like Darfur, Kordofan is home to numerous non-Sudanese Arab ethnic groups. Much of the violence that followed the fall of El-Fasher was reportedly ethnically targeted.
Communications in Kordofan have been cut, and the United Nations declared a famine in Kadugli last month.
According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 50,000 civilians have fled the region since the end of October.
Residents have been forced to forage for food in nearby forests, according to accounts gathered by AFP.
The conflict has effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the north, east and center while the RSF dominates all five state capitals in Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
Doctors without Borders (MSF) said on Sunday that measles was spreading in three of the four states in Darfur, a vast region covering much of western Sudan.
“A preventable measles outbreak is spreading across Central, South and West Darfur,” the organization said in a statement.
“Since September 2025, MSF teams have treated more than 1,300 cases. Delays in vaccine transport, approvals and coordination, by authorities and key partners are leaving children unprotected.”
