2026 Minab school attack

On 28 February 2026, the first day of the 2026 Iran war, the United States (US) Armed Forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Hormozgan province in southern Iran with a Tomahawk missile, before following up with others in close proximity, directly killing 156 civilians, including 120 schoolchildren, 35 adults, and a fetus. As of 22 September 2026, the attack was the deadliest strike in terms of civilian casualties in the ongoing war; it was also the deadliest US attack on civilians in the 21st century, being the deadliest since the Amiriyah shelter bombing in 1991. Independent investigations, satellite-based analyses, and witness accounts concluded that the school was hit by a US military strike. Those which concluded the US' responsibility in the attack include the United Nations (UN), Amnesty International, Forensic Architecture (FA) and Sky News, Bellingcat, The New York Times (NYT), the Associated Press (AP), and others. Sources involved with the US military's internal investigation corroborated that the strike was perpetrated by the US—being aware within hours of the strike—despite the probe not being concluded. The attack was condemned by the Iranian government, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Secretary-General (UNSG), some of the US Congress, and other international human rights organizations and activists as a violation of international humanitarian law (IHL). A UN fact-finding mission concluded that there was reasonable grounds to believe the US committed war crimes. US congresspersons and international media outlets condemned the use of AI warfare against Iran, including the Department of Defense's (DoD) Project Maven—a target tagging system integrating elements of Palantir's Maven Smart System and Anthropic's Claude large language model.

Background

=== Minab elementary school and civilian elements === The Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in southern Minab was attended by both boys and girls taught on separate floors; girls were taught on the upper floor and boys on the lower. According to locals, the school was previously a military facility during the Iran-Iraq war—ending in 1988—before being converted into a school. Its location was near the Sayyid al-Shuhada military complex which included the headquarters of the Asif Brigade of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN), whose operations were "likely administrative in nature" according to FA.

Investigations confirmed that the school had existed as a civilian institution for more than a decade, located close to, but separate from the IRGCN compound. According to satellite imagery, the building housing the school was walled within the IRGCN compound in 2013 and walled off from the rest of the compound by October 2016 at the latest. Its new external wall had three entrances separate from the rest of the compound, allowing entry without having to pass through the compound, and all were without a military security checkpoint. Imagery of a football pitch and assembly areas were visible in August 2017. By 2018, the school compound's walls were painted pink and blue, distinguishing the girls' and boys' yards respectively. The Guardian determined there was no indication that the building served a military purpose and found that the adjacent compound buildings were a medical clinic and a pharmacy, the former of which was walled off from the compound between 2022 and 2023. Other buildings in the immediate surroundings—some of which were also hit—were also civilian, including a clinic, cultural center, supermarket, car wash, and café. The clinic had been inaugurated in January 2025 by then IRGC commander-in-chief, Major General Hossein Salami. Furthermore, the compound's four military security posts had been removed by 2016. According to Minab's mayor, the compound had been closed for about 15 years and all military personnel had moved out. The school and adjacent civilian facilities also had a rich online presence through its website and social media.

US–Iran nuclear negotiations, US military buildup, and use of artificial intelligence

In the preparation and planning of Operation Epic Fury, the DoD utilized Project Maven, an artificial intelligence software which uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and fuse vast amounts of surveillance data—designed to streamline the targeting process and greatly reduce the amount of personnel involved in it. These systems rely on data integration software produced by Palantir Technologies. Capable of producing 1,000 target packages in one hour, the US military later claimed to have struck 6,000 targets in Iran during the first two weeks of the war.

=== Pentagon shutting of program to maintain civilian casualty policy === Trump's administration reportedly made deep cuts to the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) program. A report by the Inspector General of the US Army, "the US military no longer has the people, tools or infrastructure needed to comply with two federal statutes requiring it to maintain a functioning civilian casualty policy, and operate a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE)."

Prelude

US and Israel begin striking Iran

On the morning of 28 February 2026, the US and Israel jointly launched attacks against Iran. Airstrikes began to land around 9:45 a.m. IST, coinciding with the time at which Iranians usually send their children to school, as Saturday is a working day in Iran.

=== Attendance and closing of the school === Human rights organization Hengaw stated that around 170 students were present in the school at the time while the Iranian Ministry of Education said that 264 students were present. Between 10:00 and 10:15 a.m.—prior to the nationwide announcement closing schools—one teacher at the school saw that Tehran had been attacked. Believing that the neither the school nor the rest of the country would be attacked, the boys' head teacher, Pouran Gholipour, called an emergency announcement to close the school around 11:00 a.m., with the girls' section following suit shortly after. Teachers and administrators began to make calls to parents to have children picked up. Due to congestion and distance, many parents were not able to reach the school before the airstrike landed on the compound.

Events

First wave of strikes

At approximately 11:22 a.m., strikes on the area began. Of the initial nine strikes, taking place over a minute and a half, the school was the fourth building hit. The impact, landing in the southwesterly half of the building, instantaneously killed dozens inside. The impact affected over half of the structure, destroying the walls of the building and causing its roof to collapse, burying people underneath; graphic footage shows some bodies partly trapped, and others of body parts scattered around the site, some being as far as 147 feet (45 m) meters away. Some of those buried would die of suffocation. The explosion destroyed at least half of the two-story school building, collapsing much of the upper floor with the lower. Furthermore, according to eyewitness testimony by Hossein, father of schoolgirl victim Zahra: "The boys’ section was still partly standing. But the area where the girls took their lessons had been levelled." Footage taken on the school's brightly painted soccer and volleyball pitches shows smoke coming out of the school's windows, whose muraled walls were adorned with paintings of crayons, children, and an apple. Immediately following the strike, witnesses recount the principal, teachers, and other staff running towards the building to bring out students who had survived the first strike. Videos, recorded between 12:30 and 1:15 p.m., show civilians and aid workers searching through the rubble, during which a number of children and teachers were rescued. From 1:47 p.m. onwards, multiple news outlets in Iran began to report about the attack, calling the building a girls' school and announcing an initial death toll of five, expecting that it would rise.

Second wave of strikes

According to testimony given to the Middle East Eye by two Red Crescent medics and a victim's parent, the initial strike to the school was followed by a second, "double tap" strike. One of the medics recounted that, following the first strike, the school's principal moved a group of students to a prayer room and called parents, asking them to come pick up their children; that area was then hit by a second strike, killing most that had taken shelter. The parent corroborates this story, relating he received a call from the school informing him of the first strike, which his daughter had survived; but before he could arrive, the school was hit again, and she was killed. According to Minab's mayor and the Iranian Ministry of Education, the school was triple tapped, being struck three times in total. Although satellite-base analysis by BBC Verify suggest the area of the school was hit with multiple missiles, later investigations confirmed only two missiles had impacted the school. Twelve structures within the IRGC compound were significantly impacted by airstrikes sometime after 10:23 a.m., including the Shahid Absalan Specialist Clinic shortly after the airstrike on the school, which had begun treating those injured in the prior airstrike; it was one of five damaged sites whose roofs were punctured by munitions before the munitions' subsequent detonation. The Daily Telegraph characterized the strike on the clinic as "what appeared to be a second attack on the same location" and by authorities as a "follow-up attack". The NYT corroborated that smoke was billowing from two buildings.

Death toll

156 people were killed in the strike; the victims included 120 students (73 boys and 47 girls), 26 teachers (all of whom were women), seven parents of students (four men and three women), a school bus driver, a pharmacy technician from a nearby clinic, and a six-month-old fetus. Three more were presumed dead. Of the teachers killed, the school's principal was included. According to a local official, the fatalities included multiple parents who had come to pick up their children after the school's closure was ordered. This resulted in the death of three members of a four-member family. Fatalities rose from initial counts after the conclusion of recovery efforts on 1 March, with reported numbers fluctuating as more bodies of those killed were identified.

Of the three presumed to be dead, all were children. Despite their bodies nor any trace thereof having been found, they were found to include Makan Nasiri, Masiha Salari, and Amirali Jedavi. Nasiri's remains included only a blood-stained sweater and pair of sneakers. On 22 September, during a visit to the school, the judiciary spokesperson of Hormozgan officially announced that no remains of the three students had been found. All became symbols of civilian suffering during the conflict in Iran.

=== Fluctuation of death toll during aftermath === During rescue efforts, numerous sources reported fatality numbers other than the final official death toll. On 1 March, following the conclusion of search operations, Shiva Amelirad, representing the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, told Time magazine that 108 or more children had been killed in the attack, according to sources within Minab she was in contact with. Minab's public prosecutor office reported later that day, through the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, that 150 "innocent school girls" were killed, with some still trapped under the rubble. The judicial head of Hormozgan stated that 140 of the deceased had been identified up to that point, while efforts continued to identify another 25 people, and that the remains of the bombs used in the attack had been located, seized, and transferred for analysis in preparation for an investigation. On 3 March, Mizan News Agency claimed to have confirmed that 66 boys, 54 girls, 26 teachers, and four parents had been killed. A majority of those reportedly killed were schoolchildren.

== Aftermath == Immediate official statements in Iran included the Iranian government stating the missile was a US-Israeli airstrike, whereas Vice Governor of Hormozgan Ahmad Nafisi said the school was struck amidst US-Israeli air raids on Minab. Videos taken of the destroyed school immediately following the attack were verified by the NYT, The Washington Post, Reuters, and Iranian fact-checking organization Factnameh, as authentic; these videos were compared against existing imagery of the school. Drop Site News published accounts of the incident from several parents whose children were among those killed.

Emergency and volunteer response

As reports emerged that the school had been hit, many panicked locals, including family members of victims, rushed to the scene while security forces attempted to push families back, fearing the area would be targeted again, and sealed off the building. Soon after, recovery efforts began—some informal—as civilians, Iranian Red Crescent Society emergency workers, and individuals donning uniforms resembling the Basij searched through the debris. Although initially using just their hands, rescue services used construction cranes and shovels to save people trapped by rubble, while black smoke scorching the remaining walls continued to pour from the building's windows. Footage reveals items including severed arms, bodies, and school bags being recovered. Other imagery confirmed that areas struck within the school were used for schooling. One video shows a man, previously digging through the rubble, waving dust-covered textbooks and worksheets; in a quote translated by The Guardian, he yelled:

These are the schoolbooks of the children who are under these ruins, under this rubble here. You can see the blood of these children on these books. These are civilians, who are not in the military. This was a school and they came to study.

During recovery efforts, an opening was created between the IRGC and school's compounds, allowing recovery teams to move rubble out of the way. Corpses were collected in body bags and injured victims taken away in ambulances, with most initially being sent to the Hazrat Abolfazl located 2 km away from the school. Later in the day of the strike, bodies of the victims were transferred to their relatives gathering at a nearby designated collection area. The attack flooded Minab's morgues, however, forcing some of the bodies of victims to be held in refrigerated trucks. Identifications efforts took time as some bodies were only able to be identified through the clothes victims were wearing. Authorities announced the end of search operations for survivors on 1 March, despite some bodies still needing identification.

Search and identification of remains

Recovery operations at the site of the attack continued for approximately 7 months, led by a local forensic medicine department. In July 2026, Iranian officials in Hormozgan Province said that weeks of search operations at Shajareh Tayyebeh School and surrounding areas had uncovered 62 body fragments, which DNA testing identified as belonging to 32 student victims. The remains were buried on 22 July in a ceremony attended by the victims’ families and local residents. Seven-year-old Makan Nasiri was one of three children from the school whose remains were never recovered. Despite extensive searches by specialized teams and forensic examinations, no part of his remains was found. According to Iranian officials, the search for Nasiri was eventually closed, while a grave was prepared for him and his personal belongings, including a bloodstained sweater and a single shoe, were preserved in a glass display case at a nearby mosque. On 13 September, the head of Iran's Legal Medicine Organization, Abbas Masjedi, announced that all the bodies of the victims from Minab had been identified, except for one, which could not be identified due to its condition and the circumstances of the incident.

Mass funeral and burial

On 3 March, Iran held a mass funeral for the children killed in the airstrike in a public square in Minab, attended by thousands of mourners. Those in attendance held up imagery of the attack, faces of the children killed, and phrases condemning what one victim's mother called "a document of American crimes". At least 165 coffins draped with the Iranian flag were carried through Minab's streets on a truck. Some were arranged together in the square, where mourners gathered to be led in a prayer service. Later that day, an image shared by Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, show excavators preparing 100 or more graves at a mass burial site at Minab's Hermud cemetery—demarcated first in small white chalk rectangles—whose grounds were subsequently filled with the mourners which held a procession bringing the caskets of victims to the site. Further imagery shows bodies wrapped in white shrouds being lowered into the prepared graves before being filled in. Some victims were buried at other sites outside Minab. The imagery was mired in uncertainty over its verifiability—promoted in part by AI models misattributing the image to other disasters—but was later confirmed by fact-checkers.

=== Memorializations and stories of grieving === On 28 August 2026, the Minab School Museum-Exhibition was opened at the Hozeh Honari Gallery in the presence of Araghchi. The exhibition featured works by several contemporary Iranian painters, including Behzad Shishegaran, Sirous Moghadam, Gholam Ali Taheri, Morteza Asadi, Kazem Chalipa, Ali Nedaei, and others.

Investigations

=== US Department of Defense === A week after the strike, on 5 March, Reuters reported that two American military personnel involved in an internal investigation believed the attack was likely perpetrated by the US, although a final conclusion had not yet been reached. On 11 March, the NYT reported that the preliminary findings of the investigation determined that the US was responsible for the strike. The inquiry suggested that the school was likely targeted due to outdated coordinates provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency. CNN reported on 7 July that military intelligence systems had warned users that the information about the target was outdated, but the warnings were ignored. In response to the attention to the NYT article, on 13 March, US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth promised a thorough probe into the strike, in what the Washington Post described as a tacit acknowledgement of US responsibility for the attack. The DoD also said it elevated the investigation. Three US officials told Reuters that the administrative probe was known internally as a "15-6" [United States Army Regulation 15-6], which could be used as basis for disciplinary action. As of 21 September 2026, the Pentagon's probe has not been released and remains under investigation. However, information divulged by officials revealed that within hours of the attack, Pentagon personnel knew the US was responsible. Bloomberg News reported on 18 September that officials describe it as a "cascade of preventable failures." According to officials, the strike was an accumulation of smaller bad decisions. Pressed by Trump in the final days of February, days before the strikes on Iran, officials said he requested an overwhelming aerial assault, compressing the time frame for compiling targets. Despite this, it was proven that there were "gaps in underlying information about the site, cuts in civilian-protection personnel, and an overreliance on [AI] technology."

United Nations

A UN investigation was initiated on 17 March and is ongoing. In a report submitted on 18 September, the UN fact-finding mission on Iran said it had reasonable grounds to believe the two-tap strike was conducted by the US, and that the strikes were an indiscriminate attack on civilians that constituted a war crime under international law. It added that the school was "the intended point of impact and that the damage did not result from an errant strike or collateral damage", concluding that "the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen."

Forensic Architecture and Sky News

FA—a multidisciplinary research group based out of Goldsmiths, University of London—partially worked together with British news outlet Sky News—whose Full Story Films commissioned FA's work—to independently investigate the strike. Conducted over the four and a half months following the strike, the investigation sought to reconstruct a chronology of events including geolocating, timing strikes, and stories of survivors. Techniques FA employed included 3D modeling, image-data complex, open-source intelligence (OSINT), photogrammetry, and cartographic regression. FA and Sky News published the results of their investigations on their separate platforms on 16 July 2026. FA said that "following the initial media reporting [after the first strike], US forces would have had an opportunity to reassess their initial misidentification, before conducting subsequent strikes"—inherently blaming the US for the strikes. Sky News corroborated this fact, concluding that "all evidence points to [the] US being responsible".

Reactions

Domestic

==== Government and military ==== The day of the strikes, President Masoud Pezeshkian said that "the American and Zionist aggression against Minab Elementary School will never be erased from the historical memory of our nation". Araghchi said that the "crimes against the Iranian people will not go unanswered". The foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei called the airstrike a "blatant [war] crime", adding that "the world must stand up to this great injustice", including "the UN Security Council [which] must act now in line with its primary responsibility under the Charter". The spokesperson for the Health Ministry, Hossein Kermanpour, called the report of the attack "the most bitter news" so far, adding that there may be even more bodies under the rubble. Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Ali Bahreini, followed up on calls from Iranian officials on 1 March, raising the "unjustifiable" and "criminal" issue with UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, which Türk heeded. In an opinion piece for Al Jazeera, Bahreini placed blame on Trump as the commander-in-chief of the American armed force for the attack, arguing that "the legal question is tragically clear" before writing that "a missile engineered for precision struck a school building at the precise moment when children were present", the result of which "was not collateral damage but a human catastrophe".

==== Public and organizations ==== The head of Iran's Red Crescent, Pirhossein Kolivand, said the "unique and bitter incident" had "no comparison with any other incident" even outside of Iran, as he said no singular attack killed so many students simultaneously, "even in Gaza". In March 2026—during a friendly football match against Nigeria in Belek, Turkey—players of Iran's national team, as a "collective decision", wore black armbands and held up pink and purple school backpacks adorned with a ribbon during the national anthem. They also later held up images of both people, including children, that had died and sporting and heritage infrastructure damaged in attacks across the country. Prior to the beginning of the 2026 FIFA World Cup—landing in Tijuana, Mexico where they resided during the tournament—the team wore pins reading "#168," replicating an online hashtag representing the number of victims killed in the attack.