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A School, Not a Barracks

The compound's military character is not in dispute. Signage at its southern entrance references a "Seyyed Al-Shohada Cultural and Educational Complex" alongside an IRGC emblem. Another entrance bears a sign for the "Shaheed Absalan Specialist Clinic, the Health Commandment of the IRGC's Naval Force," inaugurated in January 2025 by the IRGC's then-commander-in-chief, Major General Hossein Salami. The main gate carries the IRGC logo alongside the word for "barracks."

But the school is a separate matter entirely.

Satellite imagery stretching back to 2016 shows that the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School was physically partitioned from the rest of the compound by an interior wall built between February and September of that year. A dedicated, unguarded street entrance was constructed at the same time, allowing students and teachers to enter without passing through any military checkpoint. Two watchtowers that had previously stood less than 50 meters from the school building were removed. By August 2017, a soccer pitch had been painted in the courtyard.

The school had, in every practical and structural sense, been separated from the military installation surrounding it. Children arrived through their own entrance. They played on their own pitch. They had no need to interact with, and no access to, the military compound next door.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence the school was being used for military purposes at the time of the attack.

The Final Minutes

Iran's work and school week begins on Saturday. On February 28, the first reports of incoming strikes surfaced online before 10 a.m. The Shajareh Tayyebeh school administration contacted parents immediately and urged them to collect their children. But the window between the warning and the explosion was devastatingly short.

"The time between the announcement of the school's closure and the moment of the explosion was extremely short; many families had not yet arrived," the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers' Trade Associations said in a statement issued on March 1.

Satellite imagery confirms the school was intact at 10:23 a.m. The first video of the aftermath appeared on social media at 11:47 a.m. Local media, citing officials, placed the moment of impact at approximately 10:45 a.m. Somewhere in that 22-minute window, a guided munition struck a school that was still full of children waiting to be taken home.

Videos verified by Human Rights Watch researchers show black smoke pouring from the roof, part of which had collapsed. The brightly painted school walls are visible in the background. People are gathered outside, screaming. Body bags are laid on the ground. Photographs show four girls in school uniforms, their faces covered in dust, lying side by side. A separate video shows a child in a green checkered school uniform — the same uniform worn by a surviving boy captured in another clip — with a wound to the head.

By March 3, a newly dug burial plot at the Minab Hermud Cemetery, roughly 3.5 kilometers from the school, contained rows of fresh graves. Satellite imagery from March 1 shows ground preparation beginning within hours of the attack. By March 4, aerial imagery shows over 100 individual graves, 83 of them excavated using heavy machinery.