{"id":203243,"date":"2026-03-07T16:19:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T16:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-u-s-military-was-targeting-an-area-near-bombed-iranian-school-sources-say-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T16:19:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T16:19:55","slug":"the-u-s-military-was-targeting-an-area-near-bombed-iranian-school-sources-say-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-u-s-military-was-targeting-an-area-near-bombed-iranian-school-sources-say-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. military was targeting an area near bombed Iranian school, sources say – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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TEHRAN \u2014 Nearly a week after airstrikes hit an elementary school <\/a>in southern Iran<\/a>, killing more than 170 people and leaving witnesses to find the severed limbs of children in the rubble, there have been increased international demands to know who was responsible and how the tragedy could happen.
The strikes, in the town of Minab, came in at the very start of the U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign on Saturday. The United States was targeting that area, where the boys and girls school, Shajareh Tayyebeh, was struck, Trump administration officials told members of Congress in a closed-door meeting this week, according to two U.S. officials. The administration officials also said their military partner, Israel, was not responsible for the school\u2019s bombing.
The U.S. has not claimed responsibility for the strikes, but the Trump administration\u2019s preliminary findings show it is increasingly likely that a U.S. munition was used in the strikes, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the investigation. The U.S. is still looking into whether the strikes were the result of bad intelligence or poor targeting, the sources said.
The administration did not offer an alternative theory to Congress members on who was responsible for the death and destruction, the two U.S. officials said. An American military investigation is ongoing.
\u201cWe need this to happen very quickly and we need to also make sure that there is accountability as well as redress for the victims,\u201d United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker T\u00fcrk, said Friday in Geneva.
New satellite imagery shows the school and several nearby buildings before and after the strikes. Witnesses and an education ministry official said that the school was located on a compound that was a base for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps until about 15 years ago.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a news conference on Wednesday that U.S. forces had been carrying out strikes along southern Iran, sharing a map appearing to show the area of Minab being targeted. He noted that Israeli forces had mainly been operating further north in Iran.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the U.S. was still \u201cinvestigating\u201d the incident, adding: \u201cWe, of course, never target civilian targets, but we\u2019re taking a look and investigating that.\u201d
And Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that U.S. forces \u201cwould not deliberately target a school.\u201d
Speaking in an exclusive interview on Thursday with NBC News\u2019 Tom Llamas, Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said it was \u201cclear that the missiles were \u2014 the school was hit by Americans,\u201d though he did not share any evidence.
Asked to address whether there was any chance a \u201cwayward Iranian missile\u201d could have played any role, Araghchi said \u201cno.\u201d
The U.S. military and Israel launched its attack on Iran, called Operation Epic Fury, around 9:45 a.m. local time on Saturday, deploying B-2 stealth bombers, fighter jets, missiles, rockets and other weapon systems. The strikes targeted Iran\u2019s navy, missile sites, command and control headquarters and air defense systems.
Three witnesses \u2014 Ahmad Kalami Pour, who said he served as the school\u2019s first principal from 2015 to 2017; Jafar Qasemi, a first responder who saw the aftermath; and Zahra Monazah, the mother of a 7-year-old who was killed in the strikes<\/a> \u2014 told NBC News that the strikes on Shajareh Tayyebeh occurred mid to late morning on Saturday. They said a second wave happened hours later.
Planet Labs images captured at 10:53 a.m. local time on Saturday appears to show that the area had not yet been impacted by strikes.
The company next captured images on March 4 showing impact sites on the school and adjoining former IRGC base, with a total of seven buildings damaged or destroyed.
Among the buildings hit appeared to be a clinic, which was opened by the IRGC Navy in January 2025, according to the semiofficial Iranian news agency ISNA.
The clinic\u2019s signage can be seen in video geolocated by NBC News. Pour also told NBC News on Wednesday that at least one of the strikes had hit the clinic and that people were injured.
Pour, Monazah, and an official with the education ministry in Minab who spoke to NBC News said the school was located on a former IRGC base. All three said the base was closed around 15 years ago, and that all military personnel had been moved out. Pour, the former principal, said the school opened in 2015.
It is not uncommon for the IRGC to develop community infrastructure, such as schools, sport centers and clinics, particularly in underprivileged areas. Recently, Pour said, on the grounds \u201cthere was a clinic, the school, a supermarket, a cultural hall, and a car wash. Those kinds of facilities were operating there.\u201d
Satellite imagery captured in 2016 showed that the school appeared to have been sectioned off from the rest of the compound and given its own entrance. Watch towers that had been present until that point appeared to have been removed from the exterior wall around the school.
Some weapons and conflict experts told NBC News that the satellite imagery appeared to reflect a targeted attack, while others noted that without knowing the intended target of the strikes, it was difficult to say whether the damage reflected \u201cprecise\u201d hits.
It is unclear if the responsible party knew the building housed a school.
Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in arms control and open-source intelligence who specializes in satellite imagery, said he believed each building in the compound had been \u201cindividually targeted,\u201d most likely with bombs dropped by aircraft.
\u201cThe targeting of this site is incredibly accurate,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cThe explosion damage is incredibly precise, and it doesn\u2019t look like really anything missed, so that would tend to argue for precision munitions delivered by aircraft.\u201d
And Rich Weir, senior adviser of the Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement to NBC News on Friday that \u201cthe number of individual strikes across the compound and the apparent accuracy with which they appear to have struck individual structures across the compound, shown in part through the relatively small circular holes that were points of entry for the munitions on multiple rooftops, indicate that the attack struck multiple structures on the compound base with highly accurate, guided munitions.\u201d
Corey Scher, a postdoctoral researcher in Conflict Ecology at Oregon State University, said the fact that \u201cmost of the bombs dropped on this compound directly hit a building\u201d appears to imply \u201csomething about targeting.\u201d
However, in a video interview on Friday, he cautioned that without knowing the intended target of the strikes, it was difficult to say whether the strikes could be considered a \u201cprecise hit.\u201d
His colleague, Oregon State associate professor Jamon Van Den Hoek, who heads Conflict Ecology at the university, noted the number of impact sites on the compound, saying the lack of \u201cevidence\u201d of a similar pattern of strikes surrounding the site indicated \u201cthere tends to be something within this compound that seemed to be aimed at.\u201d
Witnesses speaking to NBC News described the horrific scenes in the aftermath of the strikes.
Monazah, whose son, Soheil, was killed in the attack just two days before his eighth birthday, said the school had \u201ccollapsed on top of the children\u201d by the time she made it to the area.
\u201cPeople were pulling out children\u2019s arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads,\u201d she told NBC News on Monday.
Qasemi, the first responder, shared a similar account, telling NBC News \u201cthere were severed heads, severed hands, and bodies torn apart\u201d as he described \u201cextensive\u201d rubble, with children \u201ctrapped underneath it.\u201d
Amin Khodadadi reported from Tehran, Courtney Kube and Julie Tsirkin reported from Washington and Chantal Da Silva, Molly Hunter and Matthew Mulligan reported from London.<\/em>
Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Julie\u00a0Tsirkin is a\u00a0correspondent covering Capitol Hill and the White House.
Chantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.
Molly Hunter is a London-based correspondent for NBC News.
Matthew Mulligan is a senior reporter\u00a0for the NBC News Social Newsgathering team based in London.
Shira Pinson is a London based multimedia producer for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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