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

Dr. Rasouli and her husband were admitted to the ICU of a Tehran hospital, but on June 17th, due to the severity of their burns, they passed away as martyrs. Their fragile two-month-old son, Rayan Ghasemian, could not survive his wounds either, and his name was written in history as the youngest martyr of the Zionist regime’s crimes in Iran.

Now, the only remaining memory of that extinguished life is Kian Ghasemian — a six-year-old boy who, in addition to the deep sorrow of losing his parents and baby brother, bears painful burn scars across his small body. Kian is the sole survivor of a family that was wiped out in the Zionist regime’s merciless attack.

His mother, Dr. Zohreh Rasouli, was a gynecologist — a woman whose hands performed miracles of life every day, delivering newborns into the arms of their mothers. Yet those very hands, made for giving life, were unjustly stained with blood. Beside her, baby Rayan, the smallest member of the household and the youngest martyr of the 12-day war, ascended to the heavens in his mother’s embrace — their right to life taken away by the malevolent Zionist regime.

Amid this tragedy, Kian’s grandfather, with tearful eyes, speaks of the unbearable grief weighing on his heart. He recounts memories of his doctor daughter, her devoted husband, and their infant son — memories that sear the soul and reveal another painful chapter of oppression and tragedy.

Dr. Iraj Rasouli, a professor of microbiology, father of Dr. Zohreh Rasouli and grandfather of Kian Ghasemian, shared in an exclusive interview with Tasnim the story of that horrific night:

“On the night of the attack, my daughter, Dr. Zohreh Rasouli, her husband, and their two children were our guests. They usually came to Tehran on weekends to visit us and returned early the next workday. That night, they planned to leave twice but decided to stay. My daughter was very punctual about her patients and surgeries. She told her husband, ‘I have an operation at 8 a.m. tomorrow, and if I’m late, I’ll be upset because I’ve never entered the operating room after the patient has arrived.’ Her husband promised they would leave early in the morning. At 3:21 a.m., the sixth floor was struck by the Zionist regime. The explosion destroyed three floors below and three above the impact site. Our home was on the third floor, and the blast was so strong that the kitchen ceilings of all upper units collapsed. Our kitchen, connected to the living room where my daughter and her family were sleeping, was engulfed in flames. The explosion injured my wife and me as well — she was hospitalized for a while, and I still have health issues that require surgery, but I haven’t had time because I’ve been caring for Kian and the rest of the family. We were in the bedrooms, but the heat from the explosion in the kitchen and living room was so intense that it burned our children. It took me perhaps five seconds to reach them — but in those five seconds, they were already burned.”

A mother’s final act of love — Zohreh said: “Lay Rayan on my chest so he calms down.”

Holding back his tears, he continues:

“They were still half alive and managed to come down the stairs on their own. My daughter collapsed in the yard and was dragging herself on the ground when rescuers arrived and put her in the ambulance. Rayan was still alive and crying. In that moment, I saw pure motherhood in my daughter — with 80% burns, when she heard her baby’s cry, she gestured for us to place two-month-old Rayan on her chest to soothe him. As the ambulance was about to leave, my daughter said one last thing to me: ‘Dad, please inform the hospital so my patients aren’t kept waiting.’”

The doctor who thought of her patients until her final breath

Dr. Rasouli’s father struggles to continue. The memory of his daughter’s kindness and selflessness never leaves him. He adds:

“My younger daughter, who was with her in the ambulance, told me that Zohreh’s skin was peeling from her hands, yet she lifted them and asked, ‘Do you think I’ll still be able to operate with these hands?’”

The story of Dr. Zohreh Rasouli’s 4-million-toman income — a physician who paid for her poor patients’ medicine

Her father shares touching memories of his daughter’s compassion and dedication:

“My daughter never took under-the-table payments or anything like that. She had a card reader in her clinic and told her secretary, ‘If a patient can afford it, take the fee. If not, that’s fine — don’t ask for it.’ The night before the attack, we talked about her clinic. I asked, ‘How much did you make this month?’ She said, ‘Only four million tomans are left for me this month.’ After her martyrdom, when I went to nearby pharmacies, they told me, ‘Dr. Rasouli used to mark certain prescriptions to cover the cost herself.’ The pharmacies would then provide the medicines for free, charging them to her account.”