U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave only brief comments and avoided specifics when questioned about the lethal strike on a girls’ school in Iran, stating merely that the United States was “investigating” the episode.
Iranian authorities say the attack, which occurred on Saturday, claimed the lives of at least 165 pupils.
“All I can say is we’re investigating that,” Hegseth replied when asked about the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab. “We, of course, never target civilian sites, but we’re looking into it.”
The school was hit on the first day of U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran. In addition to the fatalities, Iranian state outlets reported 96 injuries, many among students attending classes at the Shajarah Tayyebeh school in the town.
On Tuesday, the United Nations human‑rights office urged the “forces behind a deadly attack on a girls’ school in Iran” to launch an inquiry and disclose details of the incident, without naming a presumed perpetrator.
Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, had earlier raised the issue with UN human‑rights chief Volker Turk in a letter dated 1 March, calling the strike “unjustifiable” and “criminal.”
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said in a statement that “the Committee is alarmed by reports of strikes on civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, which have injured and traumatized children, and claimed many young lives.” It added that children must be shielded from war.
The committee, composed of 18 independent experts, monitors how states apply the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an accord intended to safeguard children’s right to education and protect them from violence.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that U.S. forces “would not deliberately target a school.”
On Tuesday, thousands of mourners lined the streets of Minab in southern Iran for the funeral of those killed in the airstrike on the girls’ elementary school.
More than 800 people have died in the wider Middle‑East conflict since the United States and Israel launched their initial attacks on Iran, which also killed the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran responded with a series of retaliatory strikes against several regional states.
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