Iran’s World Cup team arrived in Mexico wearing lapel pins commemorating victims of a deadly US strike on an elementary school in Minab at the start of the Middle East war.
The players wore gold-colored pins with the number “168” on their jackets when getting off their plane Sunday in Tijuana, Mexico. It referred to the people killed, most of them children, when a February 28 strike, launched by the US, hit the school in Minab in southern Iran.
Iran’s embassy in Hungary on Monday noted the pins in a social media post with a reference to Minab.
The strike on the school, which was close to a Revolutionary Guard base, was previously memorialised by the Iran team before a warmup game in March in Antalya, Türkiye. Players held up pink and purple school backpacks while their national anthem played.
Neither the United States nor Israel has accepted responsibility for the attack on the school, which has come under staunch criticism from the United Nations and human rights groups. The US military is investigating and has said it would never target civilians.
The Iran delegation flew on a private jet from Antalya on Saturday to Tijuana, after a late change of plans two weeks ago to use Mexico as a training base instead of Tucson, Arizona.
Iran is preparing to play all three of its group-stage games in the US, which has delayed processing visas for players and has denied some to members of the delegation which have ties to the Revolutionary Guard.
However, it is unclear when the Iran team will be allowed to enter the US ahead of their June 15 opening game in Inglewood near Los Angeles, to face New Zealand.
Iran is due to return to Tijuana between games, and go back to Inglewood on June 21 to play Belgium, then head to Seattle to face Egypt on June 26.
Iran and the US could meet in the round of 32 on July 3 at the Dallas Cowboys' stadium in Arlington, Texas, if both teams come second in their groups.
