The bombing of an Iranian elementary school that killed 165 people involved more targets near the school than initially reported, according to NPR’s review of commercial satellite imagery.
Images suggest the school was hit on Saturday as part of a precision airstrike on a neighboring Iranian military complex – and may have been hit as a result of outdated targeting information.
The new images come from the Planet Company and are of the city of Minab in southeastern Iran. They show that a health clinic and other buildings near the school were also hit. The images are low resolution, but three independent experts confirmed NPR’s analysis of additional strike points.
Despite the fuzzy, three-meter-per-pixel satellite imagery, the strike points “look like very clean detonation centroids,” said postdoctoral researcher Corey Sher. Conflict Environment Laboratory at Oregon State University.
“These certainly look like eruption sites,” agreed Sher’s colleague, Oregon State Associate Professor Jamon van den Hoek.
Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury College who specializes in satellite imagery, said the imagery was consistent with a precision airstrike.
The images show “very precise targeting,” Lewis told NPR. “Almost all the buildings (in the compound) were hit.”
Iranian State media said More than 165 people were killed in the bomb attack on the girls’ school. According to satellite images and publicly available information, the school is less than 100 yards from the perimeter of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base. The clinic is located within the base perimeter, although both facilities are walled off from the base.
Israel has denied involvement. “We are not aware at the moment of any IDF operation in that area,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Nadav Shoshani said. told NPR on Monday. “I don’t know who is responsible for the bombing.”
At a press conference Wednesday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. is looking into what happened at the school. “All I know, I can say, is that we’re investigating it,” Hegseth said. “We, of course, never target civilian targets.”
Given Minab’s location in the southwestern part of the country, Lewis believes the US may have carried out the strike rather than Israel. “The further south and west one goes in Iran, the more likely it is that a strike will be a US strike than an Israeli strike because of the type of munitions and the geographic location,” he said.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghai He called for a strike “Deliberately,” and said the US and Israel bombed the school in part to tie up Iranian forces in the area with rescue efforts. “Calling the attack on the girls’ school a mere ‘war crime’ does not capture the full evil and shame of such a crime,” he said.
But Lewis said the strike was the result of an error. Between 2013 and 2016, satellite images show the school was separated from the base by a wall. The clinic is slated to open between 2022 and 2023.
Lewis believes that American military planners are likely not updating their target sets.
“There are thousands of targets across Iran, so there will be teams in the United States and Israel responsible for tracking those targets and updating them,” he said. “It is possible that the target will not be updated.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for additional information about the strike.
NPR’s Arejou Rezvani and the RAD team contributed to this report.
