US Military Believes It’s Responsible for Missile Strike on Iranian School: NYT

Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of what Iranian officials said was an Israeli-U.S. strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)

The U.S. military believes it is responsible for an inadvertent missile strike on a elementary school in Iran that killed at least 175 people, according to a report from The New York Times on Wednesday based on sources familiar with “an ongoing military investigation.”

President Donald Trump has denied the U.S. was responsible for the attack, saying last weekend “based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.”

“They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

The investigation indicates the attack — which happened on Feb. 28, the same day Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was eliminated — was in fact an accidental strike by American forces.

It “was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part, the preliminary investigation found,” the Times reported. “Officers at U.S. Central Command created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, people briefed on the investigation said.”

The report added the strike has now “cast a shadow” over Operation Epic Fury.

“As The New York Times acknowledges in its own reporting, the investigation is still ongoing,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to the paper.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked about the attack in an interview with 60 Minutes last Sunday and said the U.S. military was still investigating it.

The report added more details:

The school, in the town of Minab, is on the same block as buildings used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Navy, a top target of the U.S. military strikes. The site of the school was originally part of the base. Officials briefed on the inquiry said the building was not always used as a school, though it is not clear precisely when the school opened on the site.

A visual investigation by The Times showed the building housing the school had been fenced off from the military base between 2013 and 2016.

Trump on Wednesday said the war will be over “soon” because there is “practically nothing left” to target in Iran.

“The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period,” the president told Axios.

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