This image obtained from Iran’s ISNA information company reveals the positioning of a strike on a women’ college in Minab, in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, on February 28, 2026.
Ali Najafii/ISNA/AFP by way of Getty Photos
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Ali Najafii/ISNA/AFP by way of Getty Photos
The U.S. has launched a proper investigation right into a missile strike on an Iranian women’ college that killed at the least 165 civilians, after a preliminary evaluation decided the U.S. was at fault, in keeping with a U.S. official who was not approved to talk publicly. The investigation is anticipated to take months and can embody interviews with all these concerned, from planners and commanders to those that carried out the strike.
If the U.S. function within the assault is confirmed, it might rank among the many navy’s most dangerous incidents involving civilians in a long time. Congress created a particular Pentagon workplace to forestall the unintentional concentrating on of civilians however it was dramatically scaled again by Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth quickly after he took workplace final yr.
NPR was the primary information group to report that the strike on the college seemed to be a part of an assault involving precision weapons. Subsequent video of the strike launched by Iranian state media gave visible indications that Tomahawk missiles struck a compound that included the college. Iranian state media additionally launched footage of Tomahawk missile parts on a desk in entrance of the college
NPR beforehand reported that the ladies’ college was as soon as a part of what had been an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base and will have been proven on outdated U.S. goal lists as a navy constructing.
The varsity was walled off from the bottom someday between 2013 and 2016, in keeping with historic satellite tv for pc imagery reviewed by NPR. A public well being clinic on the bottom was additionally struck. Satellite tv for pc photographs present that clinic was walled off from the bottom round 2024, and opened in 2025 in keeping with native media experiences. Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander-in-chief Hossein Salami lower the ribbon for the clinic’s opening. He was assassinated by Israel later that yr.
At a press convention this week, President Trump prompt that Iran or one other nation fired the missile, calling Tomahawks “very generic” weapons. However a number of navy analysts informed NPR that no Iranian missile resembled the one within the video. Solely a handful of nations on this planet have entry to the U.S.-made Tomahawks, and the U.S. is the one nation within the battle that makes use of them.
After a sequence of deadly strikes involving civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress directed the Pentagon to scale back civilian casualties as a part of a 2019 regulation. In the course of the Biden administration, the Protection Division created the Civilian Hurt Mitigation and Response initiative.
The civilian mitigation groups work with navy commanders on track planning, and ensuring that targets are literally navy websites. The groups assist give you “no strike” lists, together with non secular and cultural websites and faculties. They’ve supplied particulars on whether or not potential goal areas have excessive concentrations of civilians. They’ve additionally prompt utilizing precision munitions, or smaller weapons to mitigate hurt.
The U.S. official informed NPR that Hegseth’s determination to cut back these efforts meant that the U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces within the Center East, had just one staffer assigned to civilian casualty mitigation operations. The official additionally stated that on account of Hegseth’s determination to chop Protection Division funding to forestall civilian casualties, navy instructions have been paying out of their very own finances for analysts to do the work that had as soon as been centrally deliberate.
NPR’s RAD group contributed to this report.
