TEHRAN - The death toll from a strike on a school in southern Iran has risen to nearly 170, as the country mourns the victims of a deliberate joint U.S.–Israeli military campaign that began early Saturday and has already claimed hundreds of lives nationwide. 

Iranian authorities say the attack, part of a broader offensive, demonstrates the indiscriminate nature of the strikes and the grave threat posed to civilians.

Shajareh Tayyebah Elementary School, a girls’ school in the city of Minab in Hormozgan Province, was struck while students were attending classes. 

The explosion tore through classrooms and hallways, collapsing large sections of the building and trapping children beneath debris.

“In a brutal attack by Zionists on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, 168 children lost their lives and were martyred. The incident also left 95 others injured,” Hossein Sadeghi, head of the Information and Public Relations Center at Iran’s Education Ministry, told IRNA on Monday. 

He added that several other students were killed in separate attacks in Tehran and Qazvin Province, in the “savage aggression of the Zionist regime and criminal America.”

 Iranian officials have emphasized that these strikes constitute clear violations of international law and deliberately target civilian infrastructure.

It remains unclear whether the U.S. or Israel carried out the specific strike on the Minab school. Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv has publicly acknowledged responsibility, but the devastation has intensified outrage across Iran, where citizens and officials alike condemn the attack as a deliberate assault on innocent children.

Mohammad Radmehr, the governor of Minab, said the search for survivors ended Sunday after rescue teams worked through the night. By then, hopes of finding more children alive had largely faded. The strike on Shajareh Tayyebah is reported to be the deadliest single incident since the launch of the broader Israeli–American campaign, and it has become a symbol of the human cost of an indiscriminate and unlawful military operation.

Footage captured by local journalists and circulated widely in Iranian media shows the scale of devastation inside the school compound. Rescue workers from the Red Crescent, joined by grieving parents, combed through rubble strewn with bloodstained textbooks, crushed desks, and torn backpacks. Portions of brightly painted classroom walls remained standing, their cheerful murals a stark contrast to the wreckage around them.

Verified videos from the scene showed rescue teams retrieving human remains and placing them in rows of body bags near ambulances. Iranian authorities say the strike violates every principle of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime if conducted deliberately or with disregard for civilian life.

Another strike reportedly hit Hedayat High School in Tehran, near 72nd Square in the Narmak district, killing two students, according to local media. Since the start of the aggression, more than 500 civilians have been killed in Iran. As casualty figures continue to rise, calls for accountability and justice are growing, with Iranian officials urging the international community to condemn the attacks and take action against those responsible for the devastation.