What we know about the strike on a school in Iran as the death toll rises
What we know about the strike on a school in Iran as the death toll rises
Chantal Da Silva Wed, March 4, 2026 at 7:23 AM UTC
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The elementary school called with an urgent message about her son. “The war has started,” she was told. Come pick him up.
The mother, who asked not to be identified, said she had only just dropped the boy off and couldn’t leave immediately since she had patients to see in her job as a midwife. Then the earth shook. And she ran.
It was too late. Three airstrikes had hit Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab in southern Iran, killing 168 people, according to the town’s mayor. Many of them were children. One of them was her son.
“By the time we arrived, the entire school had collapsed on top of the children,” the mother told NBC News. “People were pulling out children’s arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads.”
The site of a strike on a girls' school in Minab, in Iran's southern Hormozgan province, on Saturday. (Ali Najafi / AFP - Getty Images) (Ali Najafi)
Four days later, grief and outrage grew over the school deaths, which have become a flash point for opposition to the U.S. and Israeli strikes. There are also anger and uncertainty over the fact that no one has admitted responsibility for the most publicized civilian casualties since the start of the war.
A large crowd gathered to bury the children Tuesday, video and images published by state media show. There is a mass burial with rows and rows of what appear to be individual graves dug side by side.
The U.S. and Israel have since hit thousands of targets in the country, killing the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among nearly 800 other people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
Tehran is striking back, hitting Israel and several other countries in the region allied with the U.S., including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. Six U.S. service members were among those killed in its counterassault, as well as 11 people in Israel, while dozens have been killed in Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
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Smoke rising from a girls' elementary school in Minab after an airstrike. (Alex Mita / IRIB TV via AFP - Getty Images) (Alex Mita)
Asked about the deaths Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that U.S. forces “would not deliberately target a school,” adding that the Defense Department “would be investigating that if that was our strike.”
Over the weekend, U.S. Central Command said it was looking into reports of civilian deaths. The Israeli military has so far declined to comment.
The school appeared to have been near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to satellite imagery, which British broadcaster BBC News reported has previously been targeted.
Civilians and rescue forces in the rubble after a strike on a school in Minab, Iran, on Saturday. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News/WANA / via Reuters) (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News/WANA)
Both the Minab official and the mother who spoke to NBC News said the school facility was built on a Revolutionary Guard base. The base closed around 15 years ago, and all military personnel were moved, although the school stayed open, they said.
Satellite imagery from 2011 appears to show the building as part of the same compound, before it was fenced off later.
The aftermath of the strike Saturday. (Abbas Zakeri / Mehr News via Reuters) (Abbas Zakeri)
Ali Farhadi, spokesperson for Iran’s Education Ministry, said Sunday that three attacks struck the school, which he said had 264 students.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Saturday on X that the school was “bombed in broad daylight, when packed with young pupils.”
“These crimes against the Iranian People will not go unanswered,” he warned.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
