February 28, 2026.
A quiet Saturday morning in Minab, a small city in southern Iran.
Children walked into the Shajareh Tayyebeh school with backpacks and lunchboxes.
Most of them would never walk out.
As bombs began falling on Tehran, the school scrambled.
Staff called parents. Come get your kids. Now.
One father raced over to pick up his son.
He spotted young relatives waiting outside and offered them a lift.
They smiled and said no — their parents were coming.
Ten minutes later, the sky exploded.
At least five buildings in the compound were hit.
One collapsed right next to the classrooms.
The father sprinted back.
He found men digging through smoking debris, pulling out small, burned bodies he believed were the kids he'd just seen alive.
Rescuers described a tiny arm suspended in the rubble.
A man from a nearby Sunni village found his nephew in pieces.
By nightfall, doctors at the local hospital had counted 108 bodies — and warned it was an undercount.
State media later put the toll at 168.
Four months later, the UK-based monitor Airwars finished its count.
It is now considered the deadliest single strike of the 40-day US–Israeli war on Iran.
Here's the part that stings.
A US official told AP the military knew almost immediately it had hit the site.
And buried deep in the intelligence system?
One analyst had flagged that exact building as a school — seven years ago.
That note never made it to the people picking targets.
It sat in a file. Unshared. Unseen. Unused.
👉 The compound did sit next to a Revolutionary Guard base. The school had once been a Guard building before being fenced off over a decade ago.
But inside those walls on February 28 — there were kids. Just kids.
President Trump says he's seen nothing to suggest the US did it.
Iran's UN mission hasn't responded.
The Pentagon is still "reviewing findings."
Amnesty International has called it unlawful and demanded accountability.
Four months on, there is no official death toll. No named responsibility. No apology.
Just 157 names Airwars had to piece together itself.
And a school-shaped hole where a Saturday morning used to be.
That's all for now!
