The night was split open by airstrikes. When Morteza Zakeri, head of a relief and rescue team, arrived at the shattered remains of a residential block, he found collapsed walls, broken glass and families screaming from beneath the debris.

“There was no time to pause,” he said. “We cleared rubble as fast as we could. The cries of trapped families drove us forward, even as the risk of collapse grew.”

For Zakeri, duty has long since become something more. “It’s love,” he said. “We stand with our people until the very end.”

His story is one of many emerging from Iran’s Red Crescent Society this year, as the cost of humanitarian service has grown heavier than ever.

Rising toll on the front lines of aid

World Humanitarian Day, marked annually on Aug. 19, comes at a time when attacks on aid workers are rising sharply worldwide. Since the beginning of 2024, 48 Red Cross and Red Crescent staff and volunteers have been killed in the line of duty, 15 of them in the first half of this year alone.

Five of those deaths occurred in Iran in June 2025, during one of the deadliest escalations of violence for humanitarian workers in recent memory.

International law affords protection to aid workers operating under the emblems of the Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Crystal. Yet in today’s conflicts, those protections are too often ignored.

A lens and a lifeline

Among the survivors is Nima Ahmadi, who has served with the Iranian Red Crescent for nearly two decades—both as a rescuer and as a photographer. On the first night of the 12-day conflict, explosions rocked his neighborhood.

Grabbing a first-aid kit, he drove himself to the blast site. “I was alone at first,” he recalled. “I treated the wounded before emergency crews arrived. At the same time, I documented what I saw through my camera.”

In another neighborhood, he found three children sprawled in the dust of a street. “I didn’t stop,” he said. “I gave aid, then moved on, still photographing. Relief and documentation, side by side.”

When a mission turns to mourning

For others, service ended in tragedy. Kianoush Fallahi, a search-and-rescue dog handler, was working in western Tehran when a new wave of strikes began. He moved his dog, Zhiro, to safety as explosions thundered nearby.

Moments later, he walked toward an ambulance to greet colleagues. The vehicle was hit before his eyes.

“I was thrown by the blast,” he recalled. “When I stood up, I couldn’t find my colleague Mojtaba. Someone told me he had been killed. I just stood there and wept.”

Mojtaba Maleki was one of five Iranian Red Crescent volunteers and staff killed in June—each of them unarmed, carrying stretchers and medical kits rather than weapons.

Honoring the fallen

The list of names is stark. On June 13, Mehdi Zartaji Saray died while responding to casualties in East Azerbaijan province. On June 14, Yaser Zivari, a volunteer firefighter, succumbed to injuries suffered while aiding civilians in Hamedan. Two days later, an ambulance strike killed Maleki and his colleague Amir Hassan Jamshidpour in northwest Tehran. On June 22, Seyyed Ali Akbar Mir Mohammadi was killed when a building collapsed in Isfahan.

Each loss underscores the peril faced daily by humanitarian workers—and the urgent need for greater protection.

A call for protection

This year, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which leads World Humanitarian Day, has directed its fundraising efforts to the Red Family Fund. The initiative provides support to families of Red Cross and Red Crescent workers who die in the line of duty.

As humanitarians gather worldwide under the banner #ActForHumanity, the call is clear: respect humanitarian emblems, protect aid workers, and end impunity for those who attack them.

On this World Humanitarian Day, the world remembers the fallen—and those who continue, against all odds, to serve with courage, resilience and love.

Reference: IFRC