On the morning of Saturday, 28 February 2026, dozens of girls settled into their classrooms at the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, a coastal city in Iran's southern Hormozgan province. It was a normal school day. Within hours, the building no longer existed.
According to Iranian state media, the school was struck by a missile during the opening wave of US-Israeli strikes that began at around 10:00 local time, coinciding with the morning school run. The building was hit at 10:45 as classes were changing periods, destroying the walls and collapsing the roof onto students and teachers.
Iranian authorities have put the final death toll at 165 people, most of them girls aged between 7 and 12, with at least 95 others wounded. Iranian state media has reported as many as 180 killed, the majority schoolchildren, though that precise figure has not yet been independently confirmed. Video footage of the destroyed school taken in the immediate aftermath was verified as authentic by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, and Iranian fact-checking organisation Factnameh.
A representative of the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers' Trade Associations said the school had decided to close shortly after the strikes began, but that "the time between the announcement of the school's closure and the moment of the explosion was very short, and many families had not yet arrived to pick up their children."
The UN responds
The UN human rights office urged the "forces" behind the attack to investigate and share findings on the "horrific" incident, without naming them directly. High Commissioner Volker Türk called for "a prompt, impartial and thorough investigation," with spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani telling a Geneva press briefing that "the onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it."
UNESCO declared the bombing a grave violation of international humanitarian law, stressing that pupils in a place dedicated to learning are protected under that law and that "attacks against educational institutions endanger students and teachers and undermine the right to education."
UNESCO was joined in its condemnation by a host of UN bodies and senior officials, including Secretary-General António Guterres, who also condemned the retaliatory strikes by Iran that struck several Middle Eastern countries. Nobel Peace Prize laureate and UN Messenger of Peace Malala Yousafzai also condemned the bombing, describing the killing of civilians, especially children, as unconscionable and calling for an end to the escalating violence.
Denial and distance
Both Washington and Tel Aviv moved quickly to distance themselves from the school strike. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that "the United States would not deliberately target a school," adding that the Pentagon would investigate "if that was our strike." The Israeli military said it was not aware of any Israeli or US attacks in that area.
The denials follow a pattern critics have noted across multiple conflicts. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called the bombing a "horrific crime and a consolidation of the collapse of civilian protection," stressing that the mere presence of military facilities nearby does not change the school's civilian character, nor does it absolve forces of their legal obligation to verify a target before striking.
The BBC reported that the school was located near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base that was itself the target of another airstrike on the same day. An Al Jazeera investigation found an unusual strike pattern: missiles hit the military base and the school, but bypassed a specialised clinic situated between the two without touching it. The investigation concluded this exclusion "cannot be explained as a coincidence" and "strongly indicates that the executing party was operating with coordinates and maps that distinguished between the complex's different facilities."
The broader operation
President Donald Trump authorised what the White House described as "a precise, overwhelming military campaign" designated Operation Epic Fury, aimed at eliminating Iran's nuclear programme, destroying its ballistic missile arsenal, degrading proxy networks, and crippling its naval forces. US strikes hit over 1,000 targets on the first day alone, according to a fact sheet released by US Central Command.
The scale of the operation has made the question of civilian accountability more pressing, not less. Preliminary figures suggest at least 787 people have been killed in Iran, with the conflict also claiming lives in Israel, Gulf states, and among US service members. A sports hall in Lamerd was bombed during a girls' practice session, killing at least 18 civilians. The Minab school is the single deadliest incident involving civilians so far.
The Pentagon has also publicly acknowledged the role of cyber operations alongside conventional strikes. The Register reports that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine stated that US Cyber Command and Space Command were "first movers" in the operation, disrupting Iranian communications and sensor networks to leave the adversary, in his words, "without the ability to see, coordinate, or respond effectively." Critics have pointed out that degrading Iran's sensor and communications networks may have also impaired its ability to warn and evacuate civilians near military sites.
The law of war, and children
Under international humanitarian law, schools are explicitly protected civilian objects. That protection does not vanish because a military installation happens to be nearby. Legal experts note that even an administrative link to a military organisation does not change a school's civilian legal status, and that children, whether related to military personnel or not, remain protected under the prohibition on intentionally targeting them.
Those who argue the strikes were a necessary act of self-defence or strategic deterrence have a case worth hearing. Iran's decades-long support for proxy networks, its ballistic missile programme, and its nuclear ambitions have posed documented threats to regional stability. Tensions between Iran, the United States, and Israel have intensified since the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel, through exchanges of strikes in April and October 2024, and a brief war in 2025 that included a US strike aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear facilities. The strategic logic of the operation is not invented.
But strategic logic does not excuse a failure to protect children in a classroom. The two are not in conflict: rigorous targeting discipline and lawful military objectives can and must coexist. The UN's call for a genuine, independent investigation is not a political gambit; it is the minimum standard the international community should demand of any military force that claims to operate under the laws of armed conflict. UN Secretary-General Guterres has condemned the military escalation as undermining international peace and security, noting that the UN Charter prohibits "the threat of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
What happened in Minab on 28 February will not be resolved by press releases or preliminary denials. The girls of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school deserve better than that. So does the truth.