US military investigators believe it is likely that American forces were responsible for a strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran that reportedly killed scores of children, but the investigation has not reached a final conclusion, Reuters reported citing two US officials.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the assessment remains preliminary and could change if new evidence emerges that absolves the United States or points to another party.
The strike hit an elementary girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, on Saturday, the first day of coordinated US and Israeli attacks on the country. Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said the attack killed 150 students, though the toll has not been independently verified by International media outlets.
Reuters said it could not determine further details of the investigation, including the type of munition used, the circumstances surrounding the strike, or the reasons the school may have been hit.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged on Wednesday that the military was examining the incident. “We’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets,” he said at a briefing.
The report says that the Pentagon referred Reuters’ queries to US Central Command, whose spokesperson Captain Timothy Hawkins declined to comment while the investigation is ongoing.
The White House did not directly comment on the probe, though press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the Iranian government targets civilians and children, not the United States.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier that the United States would not deliberately target a school and that the Department of Defense would investigate if the strike was linked to US forces.
According to a senior Israeli official and a source with knowledge of joint planning cited by Reuters, US and Israeli forces have largely divided their operations in Iran geographically and by target type, with Israel targeting missile launch sites in western Iran while the United States has focused on missile and naval targets in the south.
The UN human rights office has called for an investigation into the strike. Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said the responsibility lies with the forces that carried out the attack to investigate the incident.
Images broadcast by Iranian state television showed funerals for the victims, with small coffins draped in Iranian flags carried through crowds before burial.
Under international humanitarian law, deliberately targeting civilian structures such as schools or hospitals could constitute a war crime. Reuters noted that if US involvement were confirmed, the incident could rank among the deadliest civilian casualty events linked to US military operations in the Middle East in decades.