Command Palette

Search for a command to run...

Discover

US Tomahawk Missile Mistakenly Hits Iranian School, Killing Over 165 Children

US Tomahawk Missile Mistakenly Hits Iranian School, Killing Over 165 Children
Click to expand

A preliminary U.S. military inquiry concluded that an American Tomahawk cruise missile mistakenly struck a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran on February 28, killing at least 165 people and likely as many as 175, most of them children, according to U.S. officials and Iranian casualty figures.nytimes +1 The blast in the coastal city of Minab occurred during the opening wave of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, in what has become the deadliest single strike on civilians of the war.nytimes +1

Investigators said the missile was intended for an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval facility but was guided by outdated targeting coordinates that still treated the wider compound, now partly a school, as a military site.nytimes +1 Imagery analysts and open‑source investigators identified debris and flight patterns consistent with a U.S. Tomahawk, a weapon used by U.S. forces but not by Iran in this conflict, further reinforcing the attribution.thehill +1

How a “Targeting Error” Turned a School Into a Kill Zone

Satellite images show Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school sits next to an IRGC naval compound and was once part of the same larger facility before being walled off and converted to civilian use years ago.npr +1 The preliminary review found Central Command planners relied on a Defense Intelligence Agency dataset that had not been updated to reflect that change, effectively making the school invisible as a protected site in the targeting process.nytimes +1

Iranian officials initially reported between 150 and 175 deaths; state media later specified at least 168 children and 14 teachers among the dead, figures that U.S. officials have not publicly contested even as they stress that the investigation is ongoing.facebook +1 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “We, of course, never target civilian targets. But we’re taking a look and investigating that,” while President Donald Trump publicly questioned whether a Tomahawk fragment necessarily proved U.S. responsibility, comments that clashed with the emerging internal findings.thehill +1

Mounting Diplomatic Pressure and Scrutiny of Pentagon Policy

The strike triggered condemnation from Tehran and renewed calls at the United Nations for an independent investigation into possible violations of international humanitarian law, with U.N. human rights officials stressing that attackers must take “all feasible precautions” to verify military targets.pbs Legal scholars said that even a mistaken strike on a school could constitute “a very serious violation of international law” if adequate safeguards were not in place.thehill

Domestically, the incident has intensified criticism of Hegseth’s earlier decision to slash the Pentagon’s civilian‑harm mitigation apparatus from roughly 200 staff to fewer than 40, cuts that investigative reports linked to reduced capacity to keep no‑strike lists current and vet targets in complex urban environments.ms +1 Lawmakers from both parties have demanded briefings on how such a lapse occurred on the first day of a major campaign, and whether anyone will be held accountable if the preliminary conclusions are confirmed.nytimes +1

The Bigger Picture

The Minab school strike has become a grim symbol of the risks in a fast‑moving air campaign that leans heavily on legacy intelligence and a Pentagon leadership that championed “lethality” while dismantling civilian‑protection safeguards.ms +1 As Iran mounts retaliatory attacks and global outrage grows, Washington faces not only a military test against a regional adversary but a political and moral reckoning over how the world’s most sophisticated military failed to see that its target had become a school full of children.nytimes +1