The hot tears... mothers crying as they bury the war dead in a cemetery in Tehran.

Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery in Tehran was the setting as gravediggers prepared new graves for victims of the American-Israeli attack on Iran.

“While gravediggers were preparing new graves for the victims of the American-Israeli attack on Iran, Mardiya Razai cried over her son Erfan Shami, who was killed in an explosion at a training camp days before his scheduled return home on leave”

Asharq Al-Awsat

Mardiya Razai cried over her son Erfan Shami, killed in an explosion at a training camp days before his scheduled return home on leave.

Asharq Al-Awsat

Iranian officials say the war, which began on February 28 with air strikes on Tehran and other cities, has killed more than 1,300 Iranians so far.

Razai clutched a large photograph of her 23-year-old son and recalled their last conversation about his upcoming leave and his return to the family.

He was to marry soon after, and the journey home was part of the wedding preparations.

She said she hadn't seen him for two months, and Monday would have been the day he came home, Reuters met her.

Shami was killed in an explosion at the training camp in Kermanshah, western Iran, turning his tent into a ball of fire and turning his body into a charred mass that his mother could not see.

Amid the solemnity of death and the majesty of the scene, and under the light rain slowly falling around her, Razai sat beside the grave in Behesht-e Zahra (Paradise of Zahra) Cemetery, a vast expanse south of Tehran.

Asharq Al-Awsat

She said her son was a dependable person, even that he 'was afraid of the dark.'

Shami and other victims of the current war were buried in Section 42 of the cemetery, where dozens of gravediggers were busy today, Monday, preparing for burial.

The workers were arranging white marble stones on which the names of the deceased were engraved.

While another coffin was being brought to burial, carried on the shoulders of relatives and friends, the roar of an air strike echoed through the cemetery, and gray smoke rose from a neighboring area.

The graves stretched beneath a canopy adorned with pictures of the deceased and Iranian flags, as families gathered, weeping and talking.

Women sat beside the graves, some crying softly, while others beat their chests with their fists to express grief and pain.

A truck stood nearby, loaded with bright flowers. The flowers were scattered over the graves as loudspeakers broadcast Shiite mourning hymns.

Other graves in the same section hold the remains of Basij members, a volunteer paramilitary force under the Revolutionary Guards, and officials and inmates from Evin Prison, which was targeted in the current war and in strikes in June of last year.

Fatemeh Darbishi (58) lost her brother, aged 44, at the start of the war, when he was trying to rescue people trapped in a car that had been bombed.

“While gravediggers were preparing new graves for the victims of the American-Israeli attack on Iran, Mardiya Razai cried over her son Erfan Shami, who was killed in an explosion at a training camp days before his scheduled return home on leave”

Asharq Al-Awsat

He was wounded by shrapnel from another explosion, which killed him.

Their parents had died when he was a small child.

She cried, 'I grew up an orphan. I am the one who raised him.'

For some mourners, grief was accompanied by anger and defiance toward Israel and the United States because of the bombing campaign.

The mother of 25-year-old Ehsan Jangravi raised her fist in the air: 'We will not be stopped, and they will not force us to bow when they burn our hearts.'

Asharq Al-Awsat