The U.S. military is likely responsible for the attack on an elementary school in southern Iran that killed scores of children, the deadliest incident of civilian casualties in the United States, and Israel’s nearly week-long war with Iran, according to a CNN and expert analysis of evidence.
Satellite images, geolocation videos, public statements from U.S. officials, and assessments from military experts suggest that the Feb. 28 attack on Shajare-Taiba Elementary School in Minab probably occurred around the same time as the U.S. military’s attack on the nearby Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) naval base.
The White House has not denied that U.S. military personnel carried out the attack, which Iranian state media said killed at least 168 children and 14 teachers. “We are not aware of any IDF activities in the area,” an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said at a press conference on Friday. Both countries stressed that civilians were not targeted.
When assessing which military forces are involved in a particular attack in any conflict, CNN typically obtains images of the remains of the weapons used in the attack and provides them to military experts so they can assess their origin.
Due to an internet outage in Iran, images and footage from the ground are limited. CNN has not been able to examine such evidence in this case, so we cannot make a definitive assessment.
New images suggest US responsibility for Iran school strike
But other evidence points to U.S. responsibility for the strike, which occurred Saturday morning, the first day of Labor and School Week in Iran. Videos geolocated by CNN show the school was attacked at or around the same time as the naval base, and one video showed smoke billowing from both the Revolutionary Guards compound and the school building.
Satellite images from 2013 showed that the school and the Revolutionary Guards base were once part of the same site. However, images from 2016 revealed that a fence had been erected to separate the school from the rest of the base, and a separate entrance to the school had been constructed. In December 2025, images showed dozens of people playing in a school courtyard on what appeared to be a ball court.
NR Jenzen Jones, a military expert and director of the Agency for Arms Research (ARES), told CNN that satellite images and video “depict multiple simultaneous or near-simultaneous attacks” that hit both Revolutionary Guard compounds and schools.
Initially, speculation swirled online that the school explosion was caused by an accidental detonation by Iranian air defenses as the Revolutionary Guards tried to repel an airstrike.
But Jenzen-Jones said that explanation was unlikely as recent images of the naval base showed significant damage to the building, suggesting it was hit with an airborne precision-guided munition rather than a “malfunctioning air defense missile.”
“We are witnessing targeted attacks that appear to be aimed at disabling those buildings. That is the most likely outcome,” he added.
Jenzen-Jones also said military bases like the one in Minab are often among the “pre-planned targets” attacked in the early stages of a conflict.
U.S. officials confirmed that the United States struck military targets in southern Iran. At a press conference on Wednesday, Gen. Dan Cain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented a map of how the United States and Israel planned their attack on Iran over the first 100 hours of the war. He said Israel mainly attacked northern Iran while the US targeted the south.
Along Iran’s “southern axis,” the United States “continues to provide pressure from the sea along the southeastern side of the coast and is projecting naval power along the Straits and into the Arabian Gulf at a scale and scale sufficient to address any necessary targets,” Kaine said.
Jenzen-Jones said the most likely explanation for the school strike was that the United States, while carrying out an attack on the naval base, either did not realize that the school was no longer part of the Revolutionary Guards compound or did not update its targeting personnel, and thus inadvertently attacked the facility.
“It’s probably a targeting failure,” he said. “Somewhere in the targeting cycle, an intelligence failure meant that either the target set was not updated or a decision was made that the wrong target would be attacked later in the cycle.”
U.S. officials have neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
Asked for comment on the incident, the Pentagon referred CNN to Central Command. CENTCOM told CNN: “Given that the incident is under investigation, it would be inappropriate for us to comment.”
Centcom previously said it was “aware of reports of harm to civilians from ongoing military operations” and was “investigating” them. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that an investigation has been launched.
The investigation is ongoing and inconclusive, but Reuters reported on Friday that U.S. military investigators believe the U.S. military was likely involved in the attack on the school.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Friday that the UN had “grave concerns” about whether the attack complied with international humanitarian law.
UN spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told CNN that the attack “cannot become just another horrific incident that makes headlines and is no longer a priority. There must be accountability.”
