At least 165 people – most of them girls aged about seven to 12 – were killed when a missile strike destroyed Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, southern Iran, on Saturday 28 February 2026, according to Iranian authorities. The strike hit during the first hours of a wider US–Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, but neither Washington nor Israel has confirmed responsibility for the school attack, and independent verification inside Iran has been hampered by tight reporting restrictions and internet disruption.
In the days since, competing narratives have solidified: Iranian officials blame the United States and Israel; US officials say they are examining reports of civilian harm while denying any intent to strike a school; Israel has said it was not aware of an attack in that area and is investigating. The UN human rights office has urged a prompt, impartial and thorough investigation and said the onus lies with the forces that carried out the attack to investigate and share their findings.
This fact-check review assesses what can, and cannot, be established from open-source evidence published so far by major outlets and international bodies. The core facts that are most strongly supported are these: a school building in Minab was struck and catastrophically collapsed during the morning; the site is adjacent to facilities linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); and the death toll reported by Iranian authorities is broadly consistent across multiple reputable news organisations, even as the precise number remains unverified independently.
The timing is also consistent across accounts. Iran’s school week runs Saturday to Thursday, meaning classes were in session when the wider strikes began. Reporting based on verified footage and satellite imagery places the school strike in the window between roughly 10:00 and 10:45 local time on 28 February, with parents reportedly having little or no time to reach the site after local warnings.
Where accounts diverge sharply is on attribution and intent.
On attribution, the public record remains incomplete. Iranian state media and officials have repeatedly attributed the strike to the joint US–Israeli operation; by contrast, US Central Command has said it is “looking into” reports of civilian harm, and senior US officials have said the United States would not deliberately target a school. Israel, meanwhile, has denied awareness of an attack in the Minab school area and said it is examining the incident. None of these statements, as reported to date, includes a publicly released strike log, weapon system detail, or a confirmed coordinate set that would allow outside investigators to definitively match a munition to the school impact.
On intent, the most serious allegation – that the school was deliberately targeted – is presented as a question raised by open-source analysis, not as a proven conclusion. Al Jazeera’s digital investigations team argues that a decade of satellite imagery shows the school precinct had been physically separated from the adjacent military compound for years, with distinct walls and entrances, and that the strike pattern raises questions about whether intelligence was outdated or whether decision-makers treated the school as effectively part of the military system. The Guardian, using verified footage, geolocation and satellite imagery, similarly describes the school as walled off from nearby IRGC-linked buildings and reports “no indication” the school itself served a military purpose at the time it was hit.
Those findings matter because proximity alone does not convert a school into a lawful military target under international humanitarian law, and because the legal tests turn on distinction (whether the object is civilian), precautions (what steps were taken to verify), and proportionality (whether expected civilian harm would be excessive relative to the anticipated military advantage). UNESCO has publicly condemned the Minab school strike as a “grave violation” of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law, reflecting the broad international position that schools are presumptively civilian objects.
However, it is not currently possible from open sources alone to prove deliberate targeting, still less to identify which military fired the munition. The most that can be responsibly said, based on the reporting available, is that multiple independent verification steps by major outlets (geolocation, comparison with satellite imagery, and corroboration of visual features) support the claim that a school building at the reported location in Minab was directly struck; and that the public explanations offered so far by the parties to the conflict have not closed the evidentiary gap on how that strike occurred.
A separate strand of claims circulating online – that the school was destroyed by a misfired Iranian air defence missile rather than an external strike – is weakly supported and, in its most viral form, appears demonstrably misleading. Both Al Jazeera and the Guardian describe misinformation using imagery presented as evidence of an Iranian misfire that was later geolocated to a different part of Iran, far from Minab. Fact-check reporting also notes an absence of credible evidence tying a failed Iranian munition to the Minab school damage in the sources it reviewed.
There are also important unknowns about the school’s administrative links to the IRGC. Al Jazeera reports that the school was part of a network affiliated with the IRGC Navy and prioritised enrolment for children of personnel, while stressing that such links do not remove civilian protection unless the facility is being used for military operations. The Guardian reports the school also enrolled local children, including those from families who could not afford higher fees elsewhere. These accounts are not mutually exclusive, but they underline why investigators will need access to enrolment records, site usage evidence and any military intelligence that informed targeting decisions.
For a UK audience, the key evidential and accountability point is straightforward: the strike’s human toll is being widely reported by reputable organisations, but responsibility and intent remain contested and cannot be resolved without an independent inquiry with access to military data. That is, in effect, what UN human rights officials are calling for. Until such an investigation is conducted, assertions that the school was deliberately targeted – or that it was accidentally hit by another party’s failed weapon – should be treated as claims requiring proof, not settled fact.