Fragments and Rubble

On 28 February 2026, the first day of the 2026 Iran war, the United States (US) Armed Forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Hormozgan province in southern Iran with a Tomahawk missile, before following up with others in close proximity, directly killing 156 civilians, including 120 schoolchildren, 35 adults, and a fetus. As of 22 September 2026, the attack was the deadliest strike in terms of civilian casualties in the ongoing war; it was also the deadliest US attack on civilians in the 21st century, being the deadliest since the Amiriyah shelter bombing in 1991. Independent investigations, satellite-based analyses, and witness accounts concluded that the school was hit by a US military strike. Those which concluded the US' responsibility in the attack include the United Nations (UN), Amnesty International, Forensic Architecture (FA) and Sky News, Bellingcat, The New York Times (NYT), the Associated Press (AP), and others. Sources involved with the US military's internal investigation corroborated that the strike was perpetrated by the US—being aware within hours of the strike—despite the probe not being concluded. The attack was condemned by the Iranian government, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Secretary-General (UNSG), some of the US Congress, and other international human rights organizations and activists as a violation of international humanitarian law (IHL). A UN fact-finding mission concluded that there was reasonable grounds to believe the US committed war crimes. US congresspersons and international media outlets condemned the use of AI warfare against Iran, including the Department of Defense's (DoD) Project Maven—a target tagging system integrating elements of Palantir's Maven Smart System and Anthropic's Claude large language model.