At least 51 have been killed in an Israel-US airstrike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, near Bandar Abbas in the Hormozgan province in southern Iran, state news agency IRNA and other media reported. 

The governor of Minab confirmed the attack this afternoon, saying 48 more, students and others, have been injured. The toll has been rising quickly.

Details remain limited due to communications disruptions and ongoing military strikes, but visuals of rescuers and others at the site shared by Iranian and other media show the school reduced to rubble, only the shell of the building still standing.

The strike came as Israel and the United States began attacks on Iranian cities early Saturday (February 28), and has been the most lethal reported so far.

Mohammad Radmehr, Special Governor, Minab, told IRNA: “This morning, the girls’ school of the city’s Derakht-e Tayyeba girls’ elementary school was attacked directly by the Zionist regime, which resulted in the martyrdom of a number of students.”

There were 170 girls attending classes in the Saturday morning shift at the Minab school, the Political, Security and Social Deputy Governor of Hormozgan told IRNA earlier this afternoon. He said the toll of the dead and injured was likely to rise.

Dazed and stunned onlookers were seen in videos of the site of the attack, as plumes of smoke rose from a classroom on the upper floor of the school.

The deaths were first reported at 4:01 PM as five killed. Tehran Times reported at 1:55 PM local time that the toll had risen to 24 killed and several injured. By 5:44 PM, 41 were reported dead at the school and many more injured, as rescuers continued digging through the rubble.

IRNA said in its latest report, cited by Turkey’s official international news agency Anadolu, that the toll is still rising and deaths have crossed 51.

Mehr news agency also reported at least two students killed in a separate strike on a school near Tehran.

Source: The Wire

--Agencies