U.S. Missile Strike Hit Iranian Sports Hall and School, Analysis Finds

Gray smoke was already rising from the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school when Iranian state media cameras captured a Tomahawk cruise missile arcing into the adjacent IRGC compound in Minab. Now, open-source analysis has expanded what the Feb. 28 strike destroyed: alongside the school, a sports hall within the same cluster of civilian structures was also hit, raising sharper questions about U.S. targeting procedures and the intelligence that drove them.

Video footage, satellite imagery, and interviews confirm that an airstrike hit Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School on the morning of Feb. 28, 2026, killing and injuring civilians, including children, parents, and teachers, and causing extensive damage and destruction. At least 165 people, most of them girls aged about seven to 12, were killed when the missile strike destroyed the primary school in Minab, southern Iran, according to Iranian authorities.

The weapon is not in dispute among munitions analysts. Missile fragments purported by Iranian state media to have struck the school bear the markings of an American Tomahawk missile, according to experts who reviewed the imagery. The U.S. is the only country currently involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles. A newly released video by Iran's Mehr News Agency, verified and geolocated by fact-checking experts, shows an American Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base next to the girls' elementary school in Minab. The Times separately reported that the Pentagon used "missiles untested in combat" in the attack, based on visual evidence examined with weapons experts.

Geolocated and verified videos show the deadly strikes hit an IRGC compound as well as an adjacent school in the city of Minab in late February. New analysis identified two distinct waves of bombing, with additional civilian structures, including the sports hall, caught in the strike pattern.

The critical question is how those civilian buildings ended up in the target set at all. The girls' school was once part of what had been an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base and may have been shown on outdated U.S. target lists as a military building. The school was walled off from the base sometime between 2013 and 2016, according to historical satellite imagery reviewed by NPR. A public health clinic on the base was also struck. Satellite images show that clinic was walled off from the base around 2024 and opened in 2025 according to local media reports. Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander-in-chief Hossein Salami cut the ribbon for the clinic's opening; he was assassinated by Israel later that year.

NBC News, citing a U.S. official and three sources familiar with preliminary findings, reported that "outdated intel likely led to the deadly U.S. strike on the Iranian elementary school." An American munition was probably responsible, though the military had yet to formally conclude the United States is responsible. The U.S. typically goes through a validation process that includes multiple intelligence organizations before a strike is approved, but it remains unclear where in the target selection process a breakdown occurred.

The U.S. launched a formal investigation into the missile strike after a preliminary assessment determined it was at fault, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The investigation is expected to take months and will include interviews with all those involved, from planners and commanders to those who carried out the strike.

President Donald Trump offered a starkly different account. Told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday: "In my opinion, based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran." By Monday, his posture had shifted slightly: "Whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report," he said when pressed.

The legal stakes are explicit. A group of United Nations experts warned that an "attack on a functioning school during class hours raises the most serious concerns under international law," noting that "intentional attacks on educational buildings" are considered war crimes.

With a formal Pentagon investigation now underway and open-source analysts still combing new video for additional strike impacts, the Minab compound's full damage picture, and the chain of decisions that produced it, remains unresolved.