Tracker: The Minab School Strike and AI Targeting
Bot Mutiny |
Every Bot Mutiny report on the US strike that killed 156 people at the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, Iran, the UN war-crime finding and the unreleased Pentagon investigation into AI in targeting.
On February 28, 2026, in the opening hours of the US and Israeli attack on Iran, two Tomahawk missiles hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, Iran, and the Minab prosecutor put the death toll at 156, including 120 schoolchildren. A UN fact-finding mission report, A/HRC/63/61, found reasonable grounds to believe the strike was a war crime and tied it to outdated targeting data, without using the words artificial intelligence. Bloomberg, citing US officials, has reported that the Pentagon's unreleased investigation found flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and an overreliance on AI contributed to the strike, and CNN has reported that commanders bypassed warnings in databases, including one powered by AI, that target intelligence was out of date. This page tracks our coverage of the strike, the investigations and the questions about AI in US targeting.
Timeline
- January 9, 2026: Secretary Pete Hegseth signs an AI strategy memorandum that, as Defense One and Forecast International reported, sets deadlines for adopting new AI models inside the department. Our report
- February 28, 2026: Two Tomahawk missiles hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab. The Minab prosecutor counts 156 dead, including 120 schoolchildren and 26 educators. Our report
- March 11, 2026: The New York Times reports that a preliminary US military investigation found the United States responsible, after target coordinates were generated from outdated intelligence, according to the UN report's account of that reporting. Our report
- May 19, 2026: Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, confirms that preliminary findings "correlated" the strike on the school with a US strike, according to the UN report. Our report
- June 16 and June 24, 2026: The UN mission writes to the US government asking for information and a meeting. The UN report says it received no reply. Our report
- September 19, 2026: Bloomberg, citing US officials, reports that Pentagon investigators found flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and an overreliance on AI contributed to the strike. The same day, Senators Mark Warner, Jack Reed and Chris Coons write to Hegseth and the Director of National Intelligence asking that inspectors general get access to reported errors in AI-enabled targeting, as quoted by CNN. Our report
- September 21, 2026: The advance edited version of the UN report A/HRC/63/61 is dated. It finds reasonable grounds to believe the strike amounts to the war crime of making a civilian object the object of an attack. Our report
What is still unknown
- What the Pentagon's command investigation found. It opened in March and has not been released.
- Whether an AI system selected the school. No public document says so, and Time reported that no publicly disclosed evidence has established that an AI model independently selected the school as a target.
- The full text of the senators' September 19 letter. Only CNN's quotations are public.
- Whether the United States will act on the UN report's call, in paragraph 129, to disclose the outcomes of its internal inquiries.