Bold headline: A devastating school bombing that shook a town—and the world deserves the full story, clearly and fairly.
The Minab school bombing stands as the deadliest mass-casualty incident of the Iran war so far, and this visual narrative walks through how it unfolded with the aim of clear understanding. Above a wall painted with pastel trees, brushes, crayons, and microscopes, thick black smoke rises. The blast shattered the school’s glass, and the curtains hung tattered from their frames.
Nearby, a burned playground lay in pieces: a red plastic slide, chairs toppled and scattered. On an overturned bookshelf, a pair of pink plastic sandals rests, now dust-covered from the explosion.
The strike struck during the morning classes. In Iran, where the school week runs Saturday to Thursday, U.S. and Israeli bombs began dropping around 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, while classes were in session. Between 10:00 and 10:45 a.m., a missile hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, tearing through the concrete building and killing dozens of girls aged seven to twelve.
Verified photographs and videos from the scene—though not published by The Guardian due to their graphic nature—show children’s bodies intermingled with rubble. One clip captures a young child’s severed arm emerging from the debris. Colorful backpacks smeared with blood and dust sit among the ruins. A girl in a green gingham dress appears, her body partly obscured by a black body bag; screams echo in the background.
A distressed man stands amid the wreckage, waving schoolbooks and worksheets as rescuers search through the rubble. “These are the schoolbooks of the children who are under these ruins,” he shouts. “You can see the blood of these children on these books. These are civilians, not fighters. This was a school and they came to study.”
Iranian state media cited up to 168 dead and 95 injured, though The Guardian has not independently verified these figures. Independent reporting is constrained inside Iran, with widespread internet outages, yet The Guardian used verified video, geolocated images, satellite images, and interviews to assemble a more detailed account of the Minab girls’ school bombing—the deadliest single event in the current U.S.-Israel-led strikes. UNESCO has labeled the attack a grave violation of international law.
Cross-checking site videos with satellite imagery helped confirm the school’s location: Shajareh Tayyebeh school sits beside a cluster of buildings that form the local IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) barracks and support facilities. The adjacent complex includes a medical clinic and a pharmacy bearing the IRGC logo, described as the “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy Medical Command.” A gym-like building within the same area is marked as the “Seyyed al-Shohada Cultural Complex of the Revolutionary Guard.” Independent OSINT researchers, the Iranian student network, and Factnameh have also verified the school’s location.
A map illustrating the school and its surroundings is available in related interactive media.
Importantly, there is no evidence that the school itself was used for military purposes. The classroom building and the playground are separated from the IRGC facilities, and the vivid murals on the walls are visible in some satellite images.
Nor were these classrooms limited to children from military families. Shiva Amelirad, representing the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations—an umbrella of Iranian teachers’ unions—told The Guardian that the school educated many local children who could not afford private schooling. She noted the tuition was lower than many private schools and overcrowding in public schools pushed families toward this institution.
Early footage from the scene shows thick smoke rising from a nearby building as well, suggesting the immediate environment was chaotic in the moments after the strike.
The timing and location—part of the initial wave of U.S.-Iraq strikes—strongly suggest the school was hit as part of broader operations against IRGC targets. The U.S. military said it was reviewing reports of civilian harm from ongoing operations, and U.S. Secretary of State stated that if the strike were theirs, they would investigate and would not deliberately target a school.
Following the attack, Iranian authorities ordered schools closed, though it remains unclear whether the bombing occurred before or just after those closure warnings reached Minab, leaving families little time to respond. Amelirad said the interval between the closure announcement and the explosion was very short, contributing to delays in people evacuating.
Casualty details remain uncertain: Isna reported that the school’s headteacher was among the dead, while Hengaw noted that the morning session typically enrolled around 170 children. A local official indicated casualties included students, parents, and school staff.
Amelirad described the local morgue as overwhelmed; refrigerated vehicles were reportedly used to store bodies due to limited morgue capacity.
In the immediate aftermath, misinformation circulated online. Some claimed the footage depicted an older event in Pakistan, which fact-checkers refuted. Other posts suggested a misfired IRGC missile caused the damage; however, cited photos claimed to show such a misfire originated in Zanjan, about 1,600 kilometers away.
The broader humanitarian toll of the war reaches well beyond Minab. Iran reported hundreds of civilian fatalities nationwide in the wake of these strikes, with various organizations providing different tallies of confirmed deaths, including dozens of children.
UNESCO issued a statement urging all parties to safeguard schools, students, and teachers, noting that attacking a school is a grave breach of international humanitarian law.
For Minab—a small town near the Sea of Oman whose economy relies heavily on agriculture, especially dates and citrus—the loss of up to 168 young girls reverberates deeply. Amelirad emphasized that many families lost more than one child, underscoring the personal, community-wide impact of the tragedy.
Would you agree that the international community should enforce stricter protections for schools and civilians in conflict zones, even amid ongoing warfare? How should we balance urgent military objectives with the imperative to shield innocent students, teachers, and families?
