Iran has renewed calls for the ICC to investigate the strike that killed 168 schoolchildren, as mourners returned to the shattered school in Minab where classrooms became graves on the opening day of the war.
Iran’s authorities have now requested that two cases linked to the February attack on the school be referred to the International Criminal Court, according to a report by Islamic Republic News Agency published on Sunday (24 May).
AnewZ visited the ruins of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab on 21 May, a city in Iran’s southern Hormozgan Province.
The community gathered at the site for a sombre memorial programme commemorating the 168 schoolgirls killed there on 28 February, the first day of the military conflict involving U.S. and Israeli forces against Iran.
Grieving families and residents wept openly at the site where classrooms once stood.
Hadi, a grieving father who lost his two sons, aged seven and 11, in the blast, told AnewZ that the “Mother of Hamed and Hani can’t come to the school anymore, but she keeps visiting their tombs every Thursday afternoon.”
The tragedy occurred during the morning when a devastating missile strike directly hit the school, causing the building to collapse immediately.
The incident has since drawn intense international scrutiny and sparked fierce global debate over military targeting and civilian accountability.
In the weeks following the strike, independent reporting shed further light on the circumstances surrounding the tragedy. According to Reuters, a preliminary internal U.S. military investigation found that U.S. forces were likely responsible for the destruction of the civilian school in Minab. Reuters’ recent coverage of the defence probe said the Pentagon had intensified its investigation and that the inquiry was nearing its conclusion.
Meanwhile, a detailed satellite-based analysis conducted by BBC Verify confirmed that multiple high-impact missiles struck the area surrounding the school. The investigation traced the site’s history, noting that although the school had originally been built within an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy compound in the 2000s, it had been transferred to the civilian Ministry of Education more than a decade ago and had operated solely as a neighbourhood school.
On the ground in Hormozgan Province, however, strategic debates matter little to a community consumed by grief. For the families of Minab, the ruins remain a monument to overwhelming loss - a stark reminder of how quickly the geopolitics of the Strait of Hormuz can shatter innocent lives.
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Iran and the United States remain at loggerheads over efforts to agree a permanent end to the war in the Gulf, according to a senior Iranian source who said there had been no progress in talks to revive the interim deal agreed in June and define a timeframe to implement it.
Iran said it was nearing a final pact with Oman defining new shipping lanes between them through the Strait of Hormuz but repeated that the U.S. must meet other conditions.
A deal on a new route for vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is "very close," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said, while warning that the reopening of the waterway depends on the U.S. meeting other conditions, including paying compensation to Iran.
An agreement between Iran and the U.S. to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is expected "soon," a U.S. official has said. The deal would result in the resumption of commercial shipping through the sea passage and the lifting of an American naval blockade on Iranian ports.
U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz are progressing and suggested an agreement with Iran could be reached “soon”.
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