Iran releases new breakdown of Minab school strike death toll
Tehran, Iran - Iran shared on Tuesday a breakdown of the death toll from a deadly strike on an Iranian school on the first day of the Middle East war, state media reported.
Seventy-three boys and 47 girls were killed in the February 28 strike on an Iranian elementary school in Minab, state broadcaster IRIB and local media reported.
The attack happened on the day the US and Israel launched attacks across Iran. In retaliation, Tehran struck targets in Israel and Gulf nations.
Twenty-six teachers, seven parents, a school bus driver, and a pharmacy technician at the clinic next to the school were also killed, IRIB said in a Telegram post.
This puts the death toll at 155 instead of more than 175 reported earlier.
A US Tomahawk cruise missile hit the elementary school due to a targeting mistake, according to the preliminary findings of a US military investigation reported by The New York Times.
President Donald Trump initially suggested that Iran itself may have been responsible – despite Iran not having Tomahawk missiles.
Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi described the attack in a video address to the United Nations Human Rights Council as a "calculated, phased assault."
Araghchi stressed that "at a time when the American-Israeli aggressors, in their own assertions, possess the most advanced technologies, and the highest-precision military and data systems, no one can believe that the attack on the school was anything other than deliberate and intentional."
Cover photo: ATTA KENARE / AFP