Analyses and video evidence emerged over the weekend showing that the air strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ Primary School on February 28—that killed over 160 girls aged 7 to 12—was carried out by the US military.

The girls’ school in Minab is in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province close to the Persian Gulf. The school was effectively pulverized by multiple blasts, and many of those killed were obliterated and could only be identified through DNA analysis. Footage showed bodies and body parts partially trapped under collapsed floors, alongside scattered schoolbags, notebooks and dust‑covered textbooks.

When the US-Israeli bombardment began on the morning of Saturday, February 28, the first working day of the week in Iran, the school was full for morning classes. Iranian authorities and local officials report that three missiles struck the area—“triple‑tapped,” according to some accounts—with multiple impacts.

According to Iranian government figures cited by international media, roughly 168–180 people were killed, including at least 160–170 children and more than a dozen teachers and staff, making it the single deadliest attack on civilians in the war. Dozens more, possibly more than 100, were injured, many with catastrophic blast and shrapnel wounds, burns and crush injuries from the collapse of the two‑story structure’s roof and walls.

The school occupied a former military facility that had been converted into the all‑girls’ elementary school, situated only a few hundred meters from the Sayyid al‑Shuhada military complex, which includes an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval brigade headquarters.

Teachers’ organizations in Iran state that the school administration tried to close the school and call parents to collect their children after the first reports of air raids, but the time between the closure announcement and the missile impacts was so short that many families had not yet arrived. 

Video and photographs from the aftermath show piles of rubble, desks and schoolbags buried in concrete dust, and rows of small coffins at mass funerals in Minab. The victims include entire classes of girls whose names appear on hastily printed lists taped to the walls of local mosques.

A short video, filmed from a nearby construction site and released by Iran’s semi‑official Mehr News Agency, has been widely circulated and independently authenticated by multiple investigative teams. The video opens with a view across an industrial area toward the IRGC naval facility near Minab; a low, fast‑moving projectile crosses the frame and then detonates in a massive fireball inside the base, sending a shockwave and debris into the air.

Munitions experts from Bellingcat, CNN, BBC Verify and other outlets have concluded that the projectile’s size, flight profile, and terminal behavior are consistent with a U.S. BGM/UGM‑109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile. As the camera pans to the right in the final seconds, a huge plume of dark smoke can be seen rising from the direction of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school, already burning, indicating that at least one earlier strike had directly hit or detonated at or above the school complex.

Later satellite imagery shows multiple impact craters and burn marks in and around both the school and the adjacent military base, confirming that the area was struck more than once in the opening wave of US attacks on southern Iran.

Major media outlets have published analyses that, taken together, amount to an implicit confirmation that the school was destroyed in a U.S. Tomahawk strike on a pre‑planned target adjacent to a known civilian facility.

• The New York Times verified the Mehr video and concluded that a Tomahawk cruise missile—of a type only fielded in this conflict by the United States—hit the IRGC naval facility next to the school in Minab on February 28. The Times reported that the footage and munitions analysis contradict the claim by President Donald Trump that Iran was responsible for the school explosion.
• CNN assembled satellite imagery, geolocated videos, US military statements and expert testimony to conclude that the US military was “likely responsible” for the strike that destroyed the elementary school and killed scores of children. CNN noted that the IRGC base in Minab was among the “pre‑planned targets” in the opening hours of the war and that US forces have acknowledged hitting military facilities in southern Iran.
• BBC Verify / BBC News authenticated the video showing a Tomahawk missile hitting the military base next to the school, stating that a US missile hit the site. The BBC published satellite analysis revealing multiple simultaneous or near‑simultaneous impacts and burn marks at both the school and nearby IRGC facilities, indicating that the school itself was directly struck multiple times.
• The Guardian echoed open‑source and expert assessments that the weapon in the video is consistent with a U.S. Tomahawk and that no other belligerent in the conflict is known to possess that system. The Guardian reported that the new footage “adds to a growing body of analysis pointing to US responsibility” for the Minab massacre and directly undermines Trump’s efforts to blame Iran.
• Reuters cited US military sources who say an internal Pentagon investigation has already concluded it is “likely” that US forces were responsible for the apparent strike on the Minab girls’ school. Reuters also published satellite photos annotated to show the destroyed Shajareh Tayyebeh school and surrounding damaged structures, noting that the school lay near a Guards‑linked facility that was on US target lists.
• CBS News reported from Minab on mass funerals for victims, relaying Iranian government statements that more than 170 people were killed in the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school. CBS News also highlighted that the attack occurred during morning classes, that the school was packed with children, and that a nearby hospital was also struck during the broader wave of US‑Israeli attacks.
• Al Jazeera published an investigation quoting analysts who judge that the girls’ school appeared to have been deliberately targeted or, at minimum, attacked with reckless disregard for its clearly civilian character. Al Jazeera described the strike as the deadliest single attack of the war, killing roughly 165 schoolgirls and staff and trapping many more under the collapsed roof.

On Saturday, President Trump claimed, when asked by reporters about the strike on the school, that Iran was responsible for the massacre and said, “in my opinion, from what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” He did not present any evidence to substantiate the claim.

At a press briefing on Monday afternoon, despite mounting evidence that the US had struck the school, Trump continued to deny it saying, “the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries.” Trump then said that Iran “also has some Tomahawks” and added that an investigation is underway and “I’m willing to live with that report.”

US officials have admitted that southern Iran, including IRGC facilities near Minab, were among the first targets in a pre‑planned strike package and that Tomahawks were used in those attacks. By any objective standard, the destruction of a functioning, clearly marked girls’ primary school during school hours in an attack on a nearby military target was carried out with full knowledge of the school’s existence is a war crime under international humanitarian law, regardless of whether it is labeled “intentional” or “accidental” by the perpetrators.

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has repeatedly made statements that the US government’s aim is to kill Iranians. In a 60 Minutes interview broadcast Sunday, Hegseth defended the US demand for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and declared that the United States is “fightin’ to win” and will keep attacking until Iran is “combat‑ineffective” and has “no choice” but to capitulate.

When pressed by CBS journalist Major Garrett about whether the US had drawn any conclusions about its role in the school strike, Hegseth refused to answer and instead said, “the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re gonna live.”

The massacre in Minab is not a “tragic incident” but part of the campaign of terror directed against the civilian population of Iran. Iranian authorities and independent monitors report that other schools, hospitals, residential apartment blocks and urban neighborhoods have been repeatedly struck in the US‑Israeli bombing.

Human rights groups estimate that at least 1,600 Iranians have been killed in the first days of the war, overwhelmingly civilians, with large numbers of women and children among the dead.

Strikes on clearly civilian objects—from a pediatric wing of a hospital in Bandar Abbas to apartment towers in working class districts—follow the same military logic: high‑yield munitions deployed against targets embedded in or adjacent to densely populated areas, with full knowledge that mass casualties will result.

The Minab atrocity has taken place amid the nearly 30‑month‑long Israeli genocide in Gaza, waged with direct US military, financial and diplomatic support. Since late 2023, Israel has systematically destroyed homes, schools, universities, hospitals, refugee camps and basic infrastructure in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and rendering the enclave uninhabitable.

This campaign—openly justified in genocidal language by leading Israeli politicians—has been a deliberate policy of mass murder aimed at breaking the resistance of the Palestinian people and clearing the territory for strategic and demographic objectives. The same methods are being deployed in Iran to terrorize the population and kill the country’s leadership with the aim of imposing neocolonial subjugation of the country under the dictates of Washington and Wall Street.