The US military accidentally struck an Iranian elementary school, in an attack that state media said killed at least 168 children and 14 teachers, likely due to outdated information about a nearby naval base, according to two sources briefed on the preliminary findings of an ongoing military investigation.
The February 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyiba school in Minab occurred while the US military was conducting strikes on a neighboring Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facility, the initial investigation found.
US Central Command created target coordinates for the strike using outdated information provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which contributed to the mistake, the sources briefed on the preliminary findings told CNN.
In response to a request for comment, a Defense Intelligence Agency spokesperson said, “The incident is under investigation; we defer to the Pentagon for further comment.” A spokesperson for US Central Command also declined to comment on the preliminary findings, citing the ongoing investigation.
Satellite imagery from 2013 showed that the school and the IRGC base were once part of the same compound. But images from 2016 revealed that a fence had been erected to separate the school from the rest of the base, and that a separate entrance to the school had been built. In December 2025, imagery showed dozens of people in the school’s courtyard apparently playing.
The New York Times first reported details of the preliminary investigation, which remains ongoing.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was unaware of a New York Times report that an ongoing military investigation had found, at least preliminarily, that the United States was responsible for a deadly strike on a school in southern Iran.
“I don’t know about that,” Trump said when asked by CNN’s Kristen Holmes about the Times story and whether he accepted responsibility.
The initial investigative findings raise additional questions about what led to the strike on the school and who was ultimately responsible.
Multiple sources told CNN the preliminary investigation is consistent with what had become increasingly obvious as new evidence continued to emerge publicly in recent days: The US military conducted the strike.
Video geolocated by CNN as filmed from a nearby construction site and released by Mehr News, a semi-official Iranian news agency, shows a munition that experts said is consistent with an American BGM or UGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) striking a location inside the IRGC base on February 28. As the camera pans to the right, a huge plume of smoke can be seen from the direction of the Shajareh Tayyiba school.