An investigation by Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera into the bombing of a girls’ primary school in southern Iran has raised questions over whether the site was deliberately targeted during US and Israeli strikes on the country.
Missiles hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the city of Minab on the morning of 28 February, killing 165 people, most of them girls aged between seven and 12, according to Iranian authorities. At least 95 others were injured.
The strike formed part of the first wave of attacks launched by the United States and Israel against Iranian targets that day. Classes were under way when the missile struck between 10am and 10.45am local time.
Images and verified videos from the scene show the school building reduced to rubble. Rescue teams and residents searched through collapsed concrete slabs and twisted metal. Blood-stained textbooks and children’s bags lay among the debris.
“These are the schoolbooks of the children who are under these ruins,” one man shouted in footage circulated online, holding up exercise books. “These are civilians, who are not in the military. This was a school and they came to study.”
Al Jazeera said its digital investigations unit analysed satellite imagery spanning more than a decade, along with geolocated videos and official Iranian records. The review found that the school had been structurally separated from an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps complex since 2016.
Satellite images from 2013 show the building as part of a walled military compound known as the Sayyid al-Shuhada complex. By September 2016, new internal walls had been built to isolate the school from the barracks. Three independent gates opened onto a public street. Two watchtowers were removed.
Later images from 2018 show a children’s sports field in the courtyard and civilian cars parked outside the new entrances. Murals painted on the walls appear in footage taken after the strike.
Al Jazeera reported that a second facility, the Martyr Absalan Specialised Clinic, opened in January 2025 on another edge of the former compound. The clinic, inaugurated by IRGC commander Major General Hossein Salami, operates through a separate gate and car park.
According to the investigation, missiles struck both the military base and the school on 28 February but left the clinic intact. Analysts said the pattern suggested the use of precise coordinates distinguishing between the three sectors.
The broadcaster concluded that the strike pattern raised fundamental questions about the intelligence used. It said either outdated data had been relied upon or the school had been treated as part of the military system.
The Guardian also examined verified footage and satellite images. The newspaper confirmed the school’s location next to IRGC support buildings but reported no evidence that the classrooms or playground served a military function. The site was walled off from the barracks, with murals visible from above.
Shiva Amelirad, a representative of the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, told The Guardian that the school enrolled children from military and non-military families. “Because its tuition was lower than many other private schools, and due to the high overcrowding in public schools, ordinary families had been compelled to enrol their children there,” she said.
Amelirad said authorities ordered schools to close after the first strikes began at about 9.40am. “The time between the announcement of the school’s closure and the moment of the explosion was very short,” she said. “Families had not yet arrived to pick up their children.”
She added that the number of dead overwhelmed the local morgue. “Due to the limited capacity of the hospital morgue, refrigerated vehicles have reportedly been used to store the bodies of the victims,” she said.
US and Israeli officials have denied deliberately targeting a school. A spokesperson for the US Department of Defense told American media that officials were unaware a school had been hit. Capt Tim Hawkins, speaking for US Central Command, said the military was “aware of reports concerning civilian harm resulting from ongoing military operations” and was “looking into them”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Department of War would investigate “if that was our strike” and that the United States “would not deliberately target a school”.
Soon after the bombing, social media accounts circulated claims that the destruction resulted from a misfired Iranian missile. Open-source researchers cited by Al Jazeera and The Guardian said images used to support that claim showed an incident in Zanjan, about 1,300 kilometres from Minab. The terrain in the images did not match the coastal landscape of Hormozgan province.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization described the bombing as a breach of international law. In a statement, UNESCO said the killing of pupils in a place dedicated to learning constituted “a grave violation” of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law.
“Attacks against educational institutions endanger students and teachers and undermine the right to education,” the agency said.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, a UN Messenger of Peace, said she was “heartbroken and appalled” by the strike. “The killing of civilians, especially children, is unconscionable, and I condemn it unequivocally,” she wrote on social media. “All states and parties must uphold their obligations under international law to protect civilians and safeguard schools.”
The Iranian Red Crescent Society said at least 555 people had been killed across the country since the start of the US-Israeli strikes. A US-based monitoring group, the Human Rights Activist News Agency, reported a higher figure and said 176 children were among the dead nationwide.
In Minab, funerals have taken place for students and staff. Photographs show rows of small coffins draped in cloth. Local officials said the casualties included teachers and the school’s headteacher.
The investigation into the strike continues as international bodies call for accountability and clarification over how a primary school became one of the deadliest single sites of the conflict.
HT