This image obtained by Iran’s ISNA news agency shows the site of a strike on a girls’ school in Minab, southern Hormozgan province, Iran, on February 28, 2026.
Ali Najafi/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images
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Ali Najafi/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. has launched a formal investigation into a missile attack on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 165 civilians, after a preliminary assessment determined the U.S. was at fault, a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly said. The investigation is expected to take months and include interviews with everyone involved, from the planners and commanders to those who carried out the strike.
If a US role in the attack is confirmed, it would rank among the military’s deadliest incidents involving civilians in decades. Congress created a special Pentagon office to prevent accidental targeting of civilians but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dramatically scaled back it soon after taking office last year.
NPR was the first news organization to report that the strike on the school appeared to be part of an attack involving precision weapons. A post-strike video released by Iranian state media gave visual indications that Tomahawk missiles had hit a compound containing a school. Iranian state media released images of Tomahawk missile units on the school’s front desk
NPR previously reported that the girls’ school was once part of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base and may have shown up as a military building on outdated US target lists.
According to historical satellite imagery reviewed by NPR, the school was fenced off from the base between 2013 and 2016. A public health clinic at the base was also destroyed. Satellite images show the clinic was closed from the base around 2024 and reopened in 2025, according to local media reports. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami cut the ribbon for the clinic’s inauguration. He was assassinated by Israel later that year.
At a press conference this week, President Trump suggested that Iran or another country had fired the missile, calling Tomahawks “very common” weapons. But several military analysts told NPR that no Iranian missile resembles the one in the video. Very few countries in the world have access to US-made tomahawks, and the US is the only country in the conflict that uses them.
After deadly strikes involving civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress directed the Pentagon to reduce civilian casualties as part of a 2019 law. During the Biden administration, the Department of Defense created the Civilian Damage Mitigation and Response Initiative.
Civilian mitigation teams work with military commanders on target planning and ensure that targets are actually military sites. Teams help come up with “no strike” lists, including religious and cultural sites and schools. They provided details on whether potential target areas had high concentrations of civilians. He suggested using precision munitions or small arms to minimize damage.
Hegseth’s decision to scale back those efforts comes as US Central Command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, has assigned only one staff member to civilian casualty mitigation operations, a US official told NPR. Because of Hegseth’s decision to cut Defense Department funding to prevent civilian casualties, military commands are paying analysts from their own budgets to do work that was once centrally planned, the official said.
NPR’s RAD team contributed to this report.
