Among the affected buildings appeared to be a clinic, which was inaugurated by the IRGC Navy in January 2025, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency ISNA.
Signage for the clinic can be seen in a video geolocated by NBC News. Pour also told NBC News on Wednesday that at least one of the attacks had hit the clinic and that people were injured.
Pour, Monazah and an Education Ministry official in Minab who spoke to NBC News said the school was located on a former IRGC base. The three said the base was closed about 15 years ago and that all military personnel had been moved away. Pour, the former principal, said the school opened in 2015.
It is not uncommon for the IRGC to develop community infrastructure, such as schools, sports centers and clinics, particularly in disadvantaged areas. Recently, Pour said, on the land “there was a clinic, the school, a supermarket, a cultural hall and a car wash. Those types of facilities were operating there.”
Satellite images captured in 2016 showed that the school appeared to have been separated from the rest of the complex and had its own entrance. The watchtowers that had been present until then seemed to have been removed from the outer wall around the school.
Precision Hit Analysis
Some weapons and conflict experts told NBC News that the satellite images appeared to reflect a targeted attack, while others noted that without knowing the intended target of the attacks, it was difficult to say whether the damage reflected “precise” hits.
It is not clear whether the person responsible knew that the building housed a school.
Jeffrey Lewis, an open-source intelligence and arms control expert who specializes in satellite imagery, said he believed each building in the complex had been “individually attacked,” most likely with bombs dropped from planes.
“The orientation of this site is incredibly precise,” Lewis said. “The blast damage is incredibly precise and it doesn’t look like anything was lost, so that would tend to be an argument in favor of aircraft-delivered precision munitions.”
And Rich Weir, senior advisor in Human Rights Watch’s Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division, said in a statement to NBC News on Friday that “the number of individual attacks throughout the complex and the apparent precision with which they appear to have hit individual structures throughout the complex, shown in part through the relatively small circular holes that were entry points for munitions on multiple roofs, indicate that the attack hit multiple structures at the base of the complex with high-precision guided munitions.”
Corey Scher, a postdoctoral researcher in Conflict Ecology at Oregon State University, said the fact that “most of the bombs dropped on this complex directly hit a building” seems to imply “something about the target.”
However, in a video interview on Friday, he warned that without knowing the intended target of the attacks, it was difficult to say whether the attacks could be considered a “precise strike.”
His colleague, Oregon State associate professor Jamon Van Den Hoek, who directs Conflict Ecology at the university, pointed to the number of hit sites at the complex and said the lack of “evidence” of a similar pattern of attacks around the site indicated that “there tends to be something within this complex that seemed to be targeting it.”
‘Destroyed’
Witnesses who spoke to NBC News described the horrific scenes after the attacks.
Monazah, whose son Soheil was killed in the attack just two days before his eighth birthday, said the school had “collapsed on top of the children” when he arrived in the area.
“People were ripping off children’s arms and legs. People were ripping off severed heads,” he told NBC News on Monday.
Qasemi, the first responder, shared a similar account, telling NBC News that “there were severed heads, severed hands and mangled bodies,” while describing “extensive” rubble, with children “trapped underneath.”
Amin Khodadadi reported from Tehran, Courtney Kube and Julie Tsirkin reported from Washington, and Chantal Da Silva, Molly Hunter and Matthew Mulligan reported from London.
