JERUSALEM (AP) 鈥� It was the deadliest reported strike in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, and most of the victims were children. Yet over four months since a U.S. missile struck an Iranian primary school, there is no final accounting of what happened.
The Trump administration has not directly accepted the blame, though the military possessed evidence almost immediately that the site had been struck, a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation, speaking anonymously to discuss an ongoing investigation. told The Associated Press.
Drawing from interviews with U.S. officials, human rights workers and Iranians in direct contact with rescuers and families of victims, the AP reconstructed the strike and its aftermath to reveal new details of what happened. Most requested anonymity for fear of retribution against them and their sources.
Details remain elusive. When asked last week about the strike, President Donald Trump said he had seen nothing to make him believe the U.S. was responsible. Iran鈥檚 mission to the United Nations did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.
Teachers called parents to pick up their kids. Then the bomb fell
Skies over the city of Minab were clear the morning of Saturday, Feb. 28. Students jostled into the Shajareh Tayyebeh school, one of many across Iran established for children of families tied to Iran鈥檚 paramilitary Revolutionary Guard or other state institutions, said Shiva Amelirad, the international representative for an Iranian teachers union who taught in Iran for 18 years and has been in contact with people in Minab.
Though most schools in Iran operate within guidelines proscribed by the Islamic Republic, the Shejareh Tayyebeh schools were more explicitly oriented toward reproducing and reinforcing the Guard鈥檚 worldview, she said, adding: 鈥淩egardless of the students鈥� family backgrounds, children are civilians and any attack targeting a school is unequivocally condemnable.鈥�
The building lay within the same compound as a Guard base, according to an AP assessment of satellite imagery. It was a Guard building before it was fenced off and converted over a decade ago.
Some of its students were the children of Guard officers. Others were local kids from an area populated by people of a majority-Sunni ethnic minority known as the Baluch, often repressed by the Iranian government, said a local rights group.
Hundreds of students were inside when bombs began falling on Tehran. School staff began calling parents, summoning them for an early pickup, said two people.
One father living nearby rushed to pick up his son, said the resident of Minab, who relayed several families’ stories. He noticed young relatives waiting for their parents, said the resident. They declined his offer of a ride home.
Ten minutes later, bombs hit at least five buildings in the compound, according to satellite imagery. At least one collapsed the neighboring school.
A tiny arm, suspended in the rubble
The father raced back to the chaos at the school, where men pawed through smoking rubble to dig out the bodies, according to video of the aftermath circulated by state media. He saw burned bodies he believed were his relatives.
Rescuers found a tiny arm, suspended in the rubble. One man from a nearby Sunni village arrived to search for his nephew. In the rubble, he found him dead.
Bodies arrived at the local hospital in pieces, said the Balochistan Human Rights Group. By the end of the day, doctors at the hospital estimated they had at least 108 bodies, but cautioned that it was likely an undercount, said the resident of Minab.
Soon, state media was reporting a toll of 168.
Clues buried in Pentagon archives
Racing to document the ongoing bombardment, journalists and rights groups struggled to verify details from Minab. Government restrictions in Iran prevented most foreign journalists from entering the country. Iran had shut down the internet. The Strait of Hormuz became a major battlefield. All branches of Iran’s military deployed heavily in the area, said the resident, heightening fears among families of the victims about speaking out.
With details of the death toll elusive, researchers homed in on the question of responsibility. Iran blamed the U.S. Trump blamed Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon was investigating.
Internally, the U.S. military knew more than it initially let on.
After the blast, the U.S. military knew they had conducted strikes in the vicinity 鈥� though it took time to verify Iranian claims that a school was struck and begin an investigation, said the U.S. official. It appears that the building housing the school was identified as such by one analyst as early as seven years ago, but that discovery was not sufficiently made known across different intelligence and military staffs and agencies; the building was not known among target developers as a school, revealing potential systematic shortfalls in the target analysis and review process, they said.
Much of the investigative work has been completed and the military is currently reviewing the findings.
Still, there is no full list of the dead.
The most extensive attempt comes from Airwars, which has identified the names and identities of 157 of the dead, including 123 children and 34 adults. Among the adults are 26 school staff members and five parents 鈥� each of whom lost at least one child in the strike.
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Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin, Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Amir Hussein Rajdy in Cairo and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
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