The war was about two hours old. Airstrikes had begun across Iran at around a quarter to ten that morning, and a decision to close schools nationwide had not yet reached Minab. Classes were still running when the first missile arrived.
What happened that morning
Shajareh Tayyebeh was a two-storey elementary school in Minab, a town in Hormozgan province in southern Iran, near a military complex. The war had opened that morning. On the morning of Saturday 28 February 2026 it was the fourth building in the area to be hit.
The first missile struck the school directly and brought down roughly half the building. Witnesses describe dozens of people killed in the moment of impact, with the roof collapsing into classrooms that were still occupied.
The second strike
What happened next is the reason this page exists. A teacher and the school principal moved surviving children into the prayer hall, away from the damaged section. The principal began telephoning parents to come and collect them.
The second missile hit the prayer hall. Only a small number of the people sheltering there survived. Red Crescent medics and parents interviewed afterwards described the sequence as a double-tap: a first strike, then a second aimed at where people had gathered after it.
The death toll
Iran's official figure is 156 dead and 95 injured. The breakdown published by the authorities is unusually detailed for an incident of this kind.
| Who | Number |
|---|---|
| Pupils | 120 (73 boys, 47 girls) |
| Teachers | 26, all women |
| Parents | 7 (4 men, 3 women) |
| School bus driver | 1 |
| Pharmacy technician | 1 |
| Unborn child | 1, at six months |
Figures for how many children were in the building differ. The Iranian education ministry said 264 pupils were present; the rights group Hengaw put it nearer 170. The counting has its own page, because the gaps between the figures are informative rather than embarrassing.
Identification took months, and the resulting list is far more complete than anything the people named in the 2007 record amount to. By July 2026, DNA testing had matched 62 body fragments to 32 pupils. By mid-September every victim but one had been identified. One seven-year-old boy was never found.
Who carried out the strike
Attribution took months rather than the years it usually takes, and the wider war produced several other incidents with large civilian tolls. Iran said immediately that the strike was American and Israeli. Israel said it had no knowledge of any operation in the area. The United States said at first only that it was aware of reports of civilian harm.
The munition
Video of the strike was examined by weapons analysts, who identified the missile from its distinctive wings as a Tomahawk, a US Navy cruise missile. Israel is not known to operate Tomahawks. That single identification narrowed the question considerably.
What Washington said, in sequence
- US Central Command acknowledges reports of civilian harm.
- The Secretary of State says the Pentagon is investigating and would not deliberately target a school.
- Two US military personnel tell Reuters the strike was likely American.
- The President says the strike was Iranian and blames inaccurate Iranian munitions.
- Pentagon preliminary findings are reported as attributing the strike to the US, citing outdated intelligence coordinates.
- The Defense Secretary promises a thorough investigation.
Those positions do not sit together, and the contradiction between them is part of the record. The investigation page follows it through.
What the investigations concluded
Independent work converged quickly. Forensic Architecture with Sky News, Bellingcat, and separate investigations by the New York Times and Washington Post all concluded the evidence pointed to a US strike. One analysis noted that the damage pattern was too precise to be a single stray missile.
The UN finding
A UN fact-finding mission opened on 17 March 2026, of the kind human rights bodies asked for and never got after 2007. On 17 September 2026 it reported that it had reasonable grounds to believe the two-strike attack was carried out by the United States and that it constituted war crimes. UN human rights experts had already criticised both Washington and Israel in July for failing to publish their own findings, saying that justice delayed is justice denied.
The US Department of Defense investigation was still open in September 2026. It is an AR 15-6 — the same category of internal Army inquiry that examined the Baghdad airstrike of 12 July 2007, though this one was convened in a form that allows disciplinary action to follow. What that process can and cannot do is set out here.
Why the Minab airstrike sits in an archive about 2007
Because it is the same shape. A first engagement, then a second aimed at the people who came to help. In Baghdad the second burst hit a van that had stopped for a wounded man; in Minab the second missile hit the room the children had been moved to.
The other resemblance is procedural. Both were examined first by the institution that carried them out, under the same regulation. In 2007 that inquiry closed the matter within weeks and nobody was ever charged. What happens with this one is not yet known, and that is the honest state of it. The two events are compared directly here.
Questions people ask about this
How many people died in the Minab school strike?
Was it a double-tap strike?
Has anyone been held responsible?
Where this comes from
- 2026 Minab school attack — Wikipedia
- UN experts condemn deadly missile strike on girls' school in Iran — UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
- Iranian girls killed by double-tap strikes on Minab school — Middle East Eye
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