As gravediggers prepare new burial plots for those killed in the US-Israeli attack on Iran, Marzia Razaei weeps for her son Arfan Shamei, who died in a blast at a military training camp days before he was due home on leave.

The war that began on February 28 with a blitz of air strikes on Tehran and other cities has killed more than 1,300 Iranians so far, according to Iranian officials, and plunged the Middle East into crisis.

Tears stream down Razaei’s face and she stares vacantly, hugging a large portrait of Shamei, 23, her voice breaking with grief as she recalls her last conversation with him, when they discussed his coming trip back home to his family.

“I hadn’t seen him for two months,” she says, adding that his last day before heading home was meant to have been Monday, the day Reuters met her.

He was to have been married soon afterwards and the trip home was part of the preparations for the wedding.

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