A US missile killed Iranian schoolchildren 4 months ago. Still, no one accepts blame

It was the deadliest reported strike in the US-Israeli war against Iran, and most of the victims were children. Yet over four months since a US missile struck an Iranian primary school, there is no final accounting of what happened.

The Trump administration has not directly accepted the blame, though the military possessed evidence almost immediately that the site had been struck, a US official with knowledge of the situation told Associated Press.

Drawing from interviews with US officials, human rights workers and Iranians in direct contact with rescuers and families of victims, AP reconstructed the strike and its aftermath to reveal new details of what happened. Most requested anonymity for fear of retribution against them and their sources.

Skies over the city of Minab were clear the morning of Saturday, February 28. Students jostled into the Shajareh Tayyebeh school, one of many across Iran established for children of families tied to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard or other state institutions, said Shiva Amelirad, the international representative for an Iranian teachers’ union who taught in Iran for 18 years and has been in contact with people in Minab.

Though most schools in Iran operate within guidelines proscribed by the Islamic Republic, the Shajareh Tayyebeh schools were more explicitly oriented towards reproducing and reinforcing the Guard’s world view, she said, adding: “Regardless of the students’ family backgrounds, children are civilians and any attack targeting a school is unequivocally condemnable”.