On February 28, 2026, in the first wave of Israeli and American attacks against Iran, a missile struck the Shajareh Tayebeh girls' primary school, causing the death of over 150 people, mostly girls. The attack occurred within the framework of the military offensive launched against Iranian military targets, in an escalation that subsequently triggered reprisals from Tehran.
The authorship of that bombing remains without official confirmation and the versions about what happened include from the hypothesis of a military error to, even, the denial of its existence by disinformation theories.
The school center was near facilities linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a circumstance that has led military analysts to suggest that the real target of the attack could have been that nearby military complex.
Israel denies authorship
Israel was, from the outset, singled out as a possible perpetrator of that attack but has repeatedly denied having knowledge of operations in the specific area of the school. The spokesperson for the Israeli Army, Nadav Shoshani, stated on March 1 that he had no record of “any operation” Israeli or American in the area of the attacked school.
This denial fueled uncertainty about the direct authorship of the attack, although reconstructions based on satellite images, verified videos and open-source geolocation, come to ratify that, indeed, a missile directly impacted the school building while classes were in session.
Iranian authorities described the episode as one of the most serious civilian attacks of the war and denounced the event before international organizations. The Iranian Government publicly held the United States and Israel responsible for the bombing and President Masoud Pezeshkian stated that the girls died in an “attack by American and Zionist aggressors against civilian centers”, while the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghchi, called it a “crime against the Iranian people”.
The UN has requested an international investigation to determine responsibilities and assess whether the attack could constitute a war crime.
An investigation now points to US ammunition
Almost a week after those events, an investigation published by The New York Times seems to shed light on what happened. Its conclusion is that Israel could be right, but also Tehran -at least in part-, given that it has pointed to Israelis and Americans as culprits. The investigation's hypothesis is that the school was blown up by an American action due to a target identification error during an attack.
The report is based on satellite images, verified videos and analysis by military experts, which suggest that the missile used could correspond to ammunition used by US forces in the bombings carried out that same day. Washington has acknowledged that it was operating militarily in the area, but maintains that it would not deliberately attack a school and has opened an internal investigation.
Disinformation: theories that labeled it a “hoax”
From the very first moment, the unfortunate episode has been surrounded by disinformation on social media. Some publications claimed that the images of the destroyed school actually came from Kabul in 2021, implying that the attack was fake. However, verifiers and OSINT analysis have confirmed that the photographs correspond to the Minab school destroyed on February 28, 2026.
Versions also circulated claiming that Iran had bombed the school by mistake, something that has also not been recognized by the Iranian Government.
An attack without confirmed author
In any case, as of today, no country has officially assumed responsibility for the bombing.
The positions remain three:
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Iran accuses the United States and Israel.
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Israel denies having participated in that specific attack.
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A journalistic investigation points to a possible misidentification by US forces.