On Saturday morning, February 28, 2026, dozens of ladies gathered on the “Shajareh Tayyebeh” (The Good Tree) faculty within the metropolis of Minab in southern Iran when Israel and the USA started preliminary strikes on the nation.
As the scholars started their research, missiles struck the college, destroying the constructing and inflicting the roof to break down on prime of the youngsters and their lecturers.
Iranian authorities have put the ultimate dying toll at 165 individuals, most of them women aged between 7 and 12. No less than 95 different individuals have been wounded within the assault.
As the photographs of the carnage unfold on social media platforms, Israeli and US authorities sought to distance themselves from the assault.
Spokespeople for the US Division of Protection and the Israeli military informed Time journal and The Related Press information company that they have been unaware {that a} faculty had been hit.
Some web sites and social media accounts linked to Israel claimed the positioning was “a part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base”.
Nevertheless, an evaluation by Al Jazeera’s digital investigations unit of satellite tv for pc imagery compiled over greater than a decade, in addition to latest video clips, revealed information stories and statements from official Iranian sources, tells a really totally different story.
The findings reveal that the college had been clearly separate from an adjoining army website for not less than 10 years.
The investigation additionally exhibits that the strike sample raises elementary questions concerning the accuracy of intelligence data on which the bombing was primarily based.
It might even increase questions on whether or not the strike was a deliberate focusing on of the college.
The significance of Minab and the focused army sq.
To know the motives for together with Minab within the first US-Israeli targets, town have to be positioned inside its broader geostrategic context.
Minab is positioned in Hormozgan in southeastern Iran, a province of huge army significance because it instantly overlooks the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf waters, making it a key hub for the operations of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval forces, NEDSA.
The IRGC Navy embraces what is named an “uneven warfare” technique that depends on deploying quick boats, drones, and coastal missile platforms able to disrupting transport or focusing on hostile naval vessels.
On this context, the “Sayyid al-Shuhada” army advanced in Minab stands out; it contains key headquarters, most notably that of the “Asif Brigade”.
The Asif missile brigade is taken into account one of the crucial necessary strike arms of the IRGC Navy. By reviewing open sources and monitoring official Iranian data, necessary particulars emerge concerning the faculty itself: The Shajareh Tayyebeh faculty in Minab is a part of a broad community of colleges structurally and administratively affiliated with the IRGC Navy.
These faculties are categorised as nonprofit establishments and are primarily meant to supply academic providers to the little children of members of the IRGC Navy.
Registration messages posted on the channel on the Iranian messaging app, “Baleh”- a channel devoted to speaking with dad and mom of pre-school kids at one faculty within the Shajareh Tayyebeh community – present that admission procedures give precedence to the youngsters of army personnel.
In a couple of announcement, the youngsters of IRGC Navy members are explicitly invited to attend on particular days to finish first-grade enrolment, with one other discover stating that registration for youngsters of non-members opens on totally different days.
Nevertheless, this administrative hyperlink (to the IRGC) or the id of the dad and mom doesn’t change the faculties’ authorized standing as civilian services beneath worldwide humanitarian regulation, until they have been being utilized in army operations.
And the youngsters who attend them – whether or not they’re the youngsters of army personnel or civilians – stay protected individuals with particular safety in armed conflicts, together with the prohibition on deliberately focusing on them or finishing up assaults that would hurt them.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has referred to as the bombing of the college as a “horrific crime and a consolidation of the collapse of civilian safety”, stressing in a press release that the mere presence of army services or bases close by doesn’t change the college’s civilian character, and doesn’t absolve US and Israeli forces of their authorized obligation to fastidiously confirm the character of the goal earlier than hanging it.
The Monitor emphasised that kids and educating workers stay, in all circumstances, “protected individuals” beneath worldwide humanitarian regulation, and that any assault that fails to differentiate between them and potential army targets constitutes a severe violation.
What do we all know concerning the strike and its timing?
On Saturday morning, the primary day of the college week in Iran, US-Israeli strikes started on the nation. Air raids began hitting numerous websites within the metropolis of Minab and Hormozgan province.
However life on the whole was continuing in a near-normal method; kids went to their faculties, and pictures and movies confirmed nearly regular site visitors on the roads surrounding the college.
Documented satellite tv for pc photos from that day present that the college constructing was nonetheless utterly intact and had not been hit by any strike till 10:23am native time (06:53 GMT).
Native and official Iranian sources say that by 10:45am (07:15 GMT), the college was instantly hit by a guided missile.
To confirm the scope and nature of the strike, Al Jazeera’s Digital Investigations Unit analysed two video clips posted on Telegram shortly after the bombing, and exactly geolocated every by matching seen landmarks with satellite tv for pc imagery.
The primary clip was filmed from a degree southwest of the advanced (at coordinates: 27°06’28.43″ N, 57°04’26.17″ E) and paperwork the primary moments of smoke rising from contained in the army block affiliated with the Sayyid al-Shuhada base (Asif Brigade), proving that the army base was certainly among the many targets hit.
The second clip, nevertheless, essentially the most indicative on this investigation, was filmed from a degree southeast of the advanced (at coordinates: 27°06’23.77″ N, 57°05’05.97″ E) and offers a large viewing angle encompassing your entire advanced.
This clip clearly exhibits two separate columns of thick black smoke rising concurrently: The primary from deep contained in the army base, and the second from the geographically unbiased website of the ladies’ faculty.
The seen distance between the 2 columns matches the space separating the 2 areas as proven by the satellite tv for pc imagery. This refutes any declare that the injury to the college was attributable to shrapnel flying from the adjoining base, and strongly signifies that the college constructing was subjected to a direct, separate strike.
Timeline of separating the civilian constructing from the army base
To ascertain the architectural separation and rebut claims that the bombed constructing was an lively barracks, the investigation group carried out a historic hint of archived satellite tv for pc photos by way of Google Earth overlaying the interval from 2013 as much as simply earlier than the 2026 assault. The varsity website coordinates are (27°06’35.4″N 57°05’05.1″E).
The chronological assessment reveals deliberate engineering to separate this a part of the army advanced and convert it fully to civilian use over the previous 10 years.
The photographs present that the college constructing and its surrounding space have been a linked, built-in a part of the principle army advanced. The outer perimeter wall was unbroken, and the advanced was surrounded by 5 safety watchtowers positioned across the corners of your entire compound. There was just one predominant entry gate serving the entire advanced, and the interior street community linked all buildings with out obstacles.
It may be stated with a level of confidence that, in 2013, the positioning was used solely as a army barracks with a strict safety character, as there was no indication of an unbiased civilian use of any a part of the advanced.
However this modified radically in 2016. Satellite tv for pc photos dated September 6, 2016 seize the principle turning level, when new inside partitions have been created and constructed, absolutely and tightly separating the college constructing space from the remainder of the army block.
On the similar time, two of the watch towers overseeing this block have been dismantled and eliminated. Most significantly, three new exterior gates have been opened instantly onto the general public avenue to serve college students’ and workers entry and exit.
This radical modification paperwork the development course of and the official elimination of the constructing from the army barracks system, changing it to an unbiased civilian function with devoted entrances that don’t go via army checkpoints and are 200 to 300 metres (650 to 1000ft) away.
The civilian use turns into clearer over time. Photographs taken on Might 5, 2018 present intense civilian exercise: Civilian automobiles might be seen lined up on the new exterior entrances. The inner courtyard was additionally geared up with a kids’s sports activities subject, and the interior partitions have been painted in a number of colors with vivid mural drawings applicable to the scholars’ age group.
This documentation might be considered definitive visible affirmation that the constructing was working at full capability as a main faculty. These options (such because the playground, wall drawings, and the presence of civilian automobiles) are the identical ones that later appeared in movies documenting residents storming the college on the day of the tragedy to seek for their daughters.
The Martyr Absalan clinic as corroborating proof
To show that the attacking social gathering was (or ought to have been) exactly conscious of the positioning’s up to date format, we traced the most recent building tasks in the identical space.
On January 14, 2025 (only one 12 months earlier than the assault), the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Main-Normal Hossein Salami, visited town of Minab to inaugurate the Martyr Absalan Specialised Clinic.
The clinic, which value 100 billion Iranian tomans (about $2m), was constructed on an space of 5,700 sq. metres (61,354 sq. toes) at one other nook of the identical unique army advanced – particularly on Resalat Road – to serve residents of japanese Hormozgan province.
Reviews revealed to cowl the clinic’s opening point out it was geared up with the most recent CT imaging gadgets, ultrasound tools, and laboratories, and that it provided civilian medical specialities corresponding to paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, and dentistry – confirming its civilian nature.
As with the college years earlier, constructing the clinic required spatial separation from the army base. After the Martyr Absalan clinic opened in January 2025, a separate gate was opened to attach it on to the exterior avenue to obtain civilian sufferers, and a devoted automobile park was established – measures mirroring what the college underwent when it was separated from the advanced and given three unbiased gates.
Thus, what had been a single unified army advanced turned three unbiased sectors, clearly distinguishable in satellite tv for pc imagery: The Shajareh Tayyebeh women’ faculty, separated since 2016 with its personal partitions and gates; the Martyr Absalan Specialised Clinic, separated since early 2025 with an unbiased civilian entrance; and the Sayyid al-Shuhada army advanced, which remained a closed and lively website.
When the US-Israeli assault started on the morning of February 28, 2026, evaluation of the strike places revealed an odd sample: Missiles hit the army base and the college, however bypassed the specialised clinic advanced positioned between the 2 with out touching it.
This exclusion can’t be defined as a coincidence; it strongly signifies that the executing social gathering was working with coordinates and maps that distinguished between the advanced’s totally different services.
Right here lies the basic contradiction uncovered by this investigation: If the intelligence was updated sufficient to spare a clinic that had been open for just one 12 months, how did it fail to establish an elementary faculty that had been separated from the army advanced and had change into a clearly outlined civilian establishment for greater than 10 years?
This contradiction leaves solely two prospects: Both the bombing of the college was the results of a grave intelligence failure attributable to reliance on outdated databases that didn’t maintain tempo with successive adjustments within the advanced’s format, or it was a deliberate strike primarily based on a linkage that treats the college as a part of the army system.
Deceptive claims
No earlier than when plumes of smoke started to rise from the college’s rubble than accounts on the X platform affiliated with, or sympathetic to, Israeli events started circulating movies and pictures claiming the college had not been struck from the skin, however was destroyed after an Iranian air defence missile missed its goal and fell again to the bottom.
This narrative replicates the identical tactic used in the course of the bombing of al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza in October 2023, when Israel rushed to accuse the Palestinian resistance of accountability for the bloodbath by way of a rocket that missed its goal.
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Nevertheless, open-source verification instruments – particularly reverse picture searches and geolocation utilizing visible landmarks – rapidly revealed that essentially the most broadly shared picture on this marketing campaign, which is claimed to indicate the influence of a failed Iranian missile that fell on the college, has nothing to do with town of Minab within the first place.
By matching the terrain and landmarks seen within the picture – particularly the snow-covered mountains within the background – with satellite tv for pc imagery, it turned clear that it pertains to an incident that occurred on the outskirts of Zanjan in northwestern Iran, about 1,300km (808 miles) from Minab.
The irony is that the character of the 2 places alone is sufficient to refute the declare: Minab is a coastal metropolis within the far southeast overlooking the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, with a tropical local weather and no snowfall, whereas Zanjan is a mountainous metropolis within the northwest that’s lined with snow in winter.
Iranian sources stated what occurred in Zanjan that day was a profitable interception operation carried out by air defence items affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, throughout which two hostile drones have been shot down. It was not potential to independently confirm this data.
The Minab faculty incident just isn’t an exception within the report of civilian services being focused by the US and Israeli militaries; fairly, it falls inside a documented sample stretching throughout many years of army operations and assaults, by which the identical scene recurs: Strikes hit faculties, hospitals, and civilian shelters, adopted by fast denial or shifting of blame to the opposite facet, earlier than unbiased investigations later reveal the falsity of official claims.
In April 1970, Israeli Phantom fighter jets bombed the Bahr al-Baqar elementary faculty in Egypt’s Sharqia governorate, killing 46 kids out of 130 who have been of their school rooms that morning.
Israel claimed the college was an Egyptian army facility, and Protection Minister Moshe Dayan stated on the time that “the Egyptians might have put elementary faculty pupils in a army base.”
However an Israeli pilot who took half within the raid and was captured in the course of the October 1973 struggle later revealed it had been a deliberate assault and that they knew it was merely a college.
In February 1991, the US Air Power dropped two “sensible” bombs on the Amiriyah civilian shelter in Baghdad, killing not less than 408 civilians – most of them ladies, kids, and the aged.
Washington stated the power had been became a army command centre, however Human Rights Watch later confirmed that the constructing bore clear markings indicating it was a public shelter and that enormous numbers of civilians have been utilizing it all through the air marketing campaign.
In April 1996, the Israeli military shelled the headquarters of the Fijian battalion of the UNIFIL worldwide drive within the city of Qana in southern Lebanon, the place about 800 Lebanese civilians have been taking refuge contained in the UN compound. 100 and 6 individuals have been killed and greater than 116 wounded.
Israel claimed it was offering cowl for a particular unit that had come beneath mortar hearth from close to the compound, however a UN investigation later concluded the Israeli bombardment was deliberate, citing video recordings exhibiting an Israeli unmanned reconnaissance plane over the compound earlier than the shelling started.
In October 2015, a US AC-130 plane bombed a Medical doctors With out Borders (identified by the French acronym, MSF) hospital within the Afghan metropolis of Kunduz, killing 42 individuals, together with 24 sufferers and 14 workers members. The organisation had beforehand supplied the hospital’s coordinates to all events to the battle. The US account modified a number of occasions – from describing the strike as “collateral injury” to claiming Afghan forces had requested it – earlier than the US commander acknowledged that the choice was fully American.
Within the Gaza Strip, assaults on academic services have reached an unprecedented degree since October 2023. By the early months of 2025, 778 of the enclave’s 815 faculties had been partially or utterly destroyed – about 95.5% of all faculties. UNRWA reported that about a million displaced individuals sought refuge in its faculties, which had been became shelters; however, not less than 1,000 individuals have been killed and a couple of,527 wounded inside these faculties via July 2025. Journalistic sources additionally documented that the Israeli military arrange a “particular strikes cell” to focus on faculties systematically, classifying them as “centres of gravity”.
Returning to the college in Minab, testimony by Shiva Amilairad, a consultant of the Coordinating Council of Iranian Lecturers’ Commerce Unions, to Time journal signifies that the choice to evacuate the college was made as quickly because the US-Israeli assaults started. However, she stated, the time between the warning issued by Iranian authorities (after detecting assaults on town) and the second the missile struck was far too brief, and most dad and mom have been unable to achieve the college to select up their daughters.
She additionally confirmed that hospital morgue capability was exhausted, forcing authorities to make use of cellular refrigerated vehicles to protect the our bodies of the younger women; some households misplaced a couple of little one in the identical incident.
The attackers’ capacity to spare newly established adjoining services (such because the Martyr Absalan clinic) and their obtrusive failure to keep away from an elementary faculty working at full capability and filled with 170 women leaves us with two eventualities, each unequivocally condemnatory: Both US and Israeli forces relied, in hanging the neighborhood of the Asif Brigade, on a really outdated, outdated intelligence goal financial institution (courting to earlier than 2013), which might represent grave negligence and reckless disregard for civilian lives; or the strike was carried out intentionally and with prior information to inflict most societal shock and undermine widespread assist for Iran’s army institution.
