Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian Naval Base

The Feb. 28 school strike in Minab, which killed dozens, including children, appears to have been part of an attack on an adjacent naval base in southern Iran, where officials said U.S. forces were operating.

The Feb. 28 strike that hit an elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab is the deadliest known episode of civilian casualties since the United States and Israel attacked Iran — and no side has yet taken responsibility.

But a body of evidence assembled by The New York Times — including newly released satellite imagery, social media posts and verified videos — indicates the school building was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

And official statements that U.S. forces were attacking naval targets near the Strait of Hormuz, where the I.R.G.C. base is located, suggest they were most likely to have carried out the strike.

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Determining precisely what happened has been impeded by the lack of visible weapons fragments and the inability of outside reporters to reach the scene. The total death toll has yet to be independently confirmed, but Iranian health officials and state media said the strike had killed at least 175 people, many of them children, at the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school.

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