156 dead at Minab: a US Tomahawk, a school, and a silence that has lasted 144 days

One hundred and twenty children, none of them older than 13, were killed on a Friday morning in late February when a United States Tomahawk cruise missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, a small city in Iran's southern Hormozgan province, roughly 50 kilometers east of Bandar Abbas and within sight of the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty-six teachers died alongside them. Amnesty International puts the overall toll at 156 ¹¹; Sky News and Forensic Architecture confirm at least 140 dead, including 121 schoolchildren ⁴⁸; a BBC team on the ground counted 120 children ⁵. The numbers do not square across investigations, and that disagreement is itself part of the story.

The attack came on February 28, 2026 — the first day of the US–Israeli war on Iran ³⁴ — and the question of what hit the school, and who ordered it, has now moved from Iranian official statements into the realm of independent open-source forensics. BBC Verify and CNN, working from authentic video published by Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency, both concluded that a US Tomahawk struck a compound next to the school ³⁶. Amnesty said a Tomahawk was likely used and that the school building itself was directly hit, alongside twelve other structures in an adjacent IRGC facility ⁷¹¹. The Guardian reported that a US preliminary inquiry found American responsibility ¹⁰. An Associated Press reconstruction found that at least one US missile struck an Iranian primary school, and called it the deadliest reported strike of the war ².

The video at the center of this report — a Sky News investigation that aired alongside the Forensic Architecture study — identified the weapon as a Tomahawk by analyzing debris recovered at the scene and matching fragments to the cruise missile's specifications. The framing matters because the administration in Washington has refused to accept it.

Sources do not agree, and a careful read of the record should not pretend they do. Iranian authorities have said 168 people were killed, including around 110 children ³⁶. Sky News and Forensic Architecture, working together, place 121 schoolchildren and 26 teachers among the dead and confirm more than 140 killed overall ⁴⁸. BBC journalists who visited the site counted 120 children killed ⁵. Amnesty International says 156 people died, of whom 120 were children ¹¹. Al Jazeera, citing Amnesty, has cited a figure of at least 170, mostly children ⁷. The school's location, as a civilian structure in the path of a strike aimed at an adjacent military compound, is consistent across every account; the precise toll is not.

On March 13, 2026, two weeks after the strike, the Pentagon elevated its inquiry into what happened at Minab ⁹. More than four months later, as of the publication of this article, the Pentagon has released no formal finding, no public casualty assessment, and no acknowledgment of responsibility ². The administration has, in the meantime, suggested that images of the destroyed school could be artificial intelligence fabrications ⁴⁸.

The forensic work done outside the Pentagon has converged on the same answer from several different angles. Sky News and Forensic Architecture matched the weapon to a Tomahawk by its blast pattern, fragmentation and trajectory ⁴⁸. BBC Verify and CNN worked from independent video analysis to reach the same conclusion ³⁶. Amnesty called the strike unlawful as well as deadly, on the grounds that the school was a clearly civilian object and that the surrounding compound did not change its protected status ⁷¹¹. The Guardian's reporting on the preliminary US inquiry gave the forensic findings a domestic anchor inside the American government ¹⁰.

Minab sits on Iran's southern coast, within a short drive of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which a meaningful share of the world's seaborne oil passes. The city is small enough that a strike on a primary school is a strike on the community itself. The province is majority Baluch, a predominantly Sunni minority that has long complained of marginalization within Iran ². Several of the families who lost children in the strike have described, to the BBC and to other outlets that visited the site, a wait of months for any official acknowledgment, from either Tehran or Washington ⁵.

Outside the United States government, the investigative consensus is essentially settled: the weapon was a Tomahawk, the strike hit a school, and the dead were overwhelmingly children. Inside the United States government, the position is, in effect, that the matter remains under review. The families in Minab are not waiting on a review. They have been waiting on an answer since February.