In a peaceful home in the capital, a family’s life flowed with love and hope; that night, the daughter, her husband, and their children were visiting her parents’ house — but in the blink of an eye, everything was buried in blood and rubble.
On Friday, June 13 of this year, the Zionist regime launched a brutal attack on the sixth floor of a residential building in Saadat Abad, Tehran. That night, Dr. Zahra Rasouli, a gynecologist and obstetrician at Rahimian Alvand Hospital in Qazvin, was visiting her parents’ home with her husband and two children when a powerful explosion tore through the building, leaving them all with severe burns.

Dr. Rasouli and her husband were admitted to the ICU of a Tehran hospital, but on June 16, both succumbed to their injuries and were martyred. Their infant son, Rayan Ghasemian, only two months old, also did not survive his burns — his name is now written in history as the youngest martyr of the Zionist regime’s crimes in Iran.

Now, the only survivor of that silenced life is Kian Ghasemian, a six-year-old boy who carries not only the deep wound of losing his parents and baby brother but also the painful scars that cover his small body. Kian is the sole survivor of a family destroyed in the barbaric attack by the Zionist regime.

His mother, Dr. Zahra Rasouli, was a compassionate obstetrician — a woman who brought life into the world every day, gifting newborns into their mothers’ arms. Yet the same hands that were made to give life were themselves unjustly drenched in blood. Beside her, baby Rayan, the youngest member of the family and the youngest martyr of the 12-day war, ascended to the heavens in his mother’s embrace — their right to life stolen by a cruel enemy.

Meanwhile, Kian’s grandfather, his eyes full of tears, speaks of the unbearable grief that weighs on his heart. He recalls his daughter, the devoted doctor; his son-in-law, her constant companion; and his tiny grandchild, still an infant — memories that burn with sorrow and expose yet another layer of this clear act of oppression and brutality.

Dr. Iraj Rasouli, professor of microbiology and father of Dr. Zahra Rasouli — and Kian’s grandfather — recounts in an exclusive interview with Tasnim the events of that night:

“On the night of the attack, my daughter, Dr. Zahra Rasouli, was visiting us with her husband and two children. They usually came to Tehran on weekends to see us and returned home early the next working day. That night, they intended to leave twice but decided to stay.
My daughter was very conscientious about her patients’ appointments and surgeries. She told her husband, ‘I have surgery scheduled for 8 a.m. tomorrow. If I don’t make it, I’ll be upset — I’ve never entered the operating room late.’ Her husband promised they would leave early in the morning.
At 3:21 a.m. on Friday, the sixth floor of the building was struck by the Zionist regime’s missile. The blast destroyed three floors above and three below the target. Our apartment was on the third floor, and the explosion caused the kitchen ceilings of the upper units to collapse. Our kitchen was connected to the living room, where my daughter, her husband, and the children were sleeping. The force of the blast injured my wife and me — she was hospitalized for a while, and I still have medical issues that require surgery, but I haven’t had time because I’m taking care of Kian and other family members.
We were in the bedrooms, but the heat and flames from the explosion in the kitchen and living room were so intense that they burned our children. It took me maybe five seconds to reach them — but in those five seconds, they were already burning.”

A Mother’s Instinct in Her Final Moments

“They were still barely alive,” he continues, swallowing his grief. “They managed to walk down the stairs themselves. In the courtyard, my daughter collapsed, dragging herself across the ground with her hands until the rescue team arrived and placed her in the ambulance.
Baby Rayan was still alive and crying. In that moment, I witnessed pure motherhood — my daughter, with 80% burns, hearing her baby cry, gestured for them to place him on her chest to calm him. As the ambulance was about to leave, she told me her last words:
‘Dad, please inform the hospital so my patients won’t be waiting for me.’”

The Doctor Who Cared for Her Patients Until Her Last Breath

Recalling more memories becomes too painful for Dr. Rasouli, as the kindness and humility of his daughter flood his mind.

“My younger daughter, who was with her in the ambulance, told me that Zahra’s hands were so badly burned that the skin hung loose, yet she raised them and asked, ‘Do you think I’ll still be able to operate with these hands?’”

The Story of Dr. Zahra Rasouli’s Four-Million-Toman Income

— A doctor who paid for her poor patients’ visits and medicine herself

Her father recalls touching stories of her generosity and compassion for those in need:

“My daughter never accepted bribes or under-the-table payments. She had a card reader in her office and told her assistant, ‘If a patient can pay, let them; if not, it’s fine — they don’t need to.’
The night before the attack, we talked about her clinic. I asked, ‘How much do you earn these days?’ She said, ‘This month I’ve made only four million tomans.’
After her martyrdom, when I visited nearby pharmacies, they told me, ‘Dr. Rasouli used to mark certain prescriptions so we’d know she would pay for those patients’ medicines herself.’ The pharmacies would then provide those drugs for free, charging them to her account.”