'Beyond Evil': Medics Say Iran School Massacre Was Double-Tap Strike

As the US and Israel continued to wage war on Iran Wednesday, paramedics and victims’ relatives said last weekend’s bombing of an elementary in southern Iran was a so-called "double-tap" airstrike—a common tactic used by US, Israeli, and Russian forces by which attackers bomb a target and then follow up with a second strike meant to kill survivors and first responders.

Iranian officials said that around 175 people—most of them young girls and boys—were killed when the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab was hit Saturday by armaments including what Tehran said is a US missile.

“When the first bomb hit the school, one of the teachers and the principal moved a group of students to the prayer hall to protect them,” said one of two Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) paramedics who spoke to Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity.

“The principal called the parents and told them to come and pick up their children," the paramedic added. "But the second bomb hit that area as well. Only a small number of those who had taken shelter survived... Some parents recognized their children only because of the gold bracelets they were wearing."

The father of a girl killed in the second strike on the facility told Middle East Eye that school officials "asked us to come as quickly as possible and take our daughter home.”

However, when he arrived at the school, "My little girl was completely burned."

“There was nothing left of her," he said. "We could only identify her from her school bag, which she was still holding."

"When I saw her smile after coming home from work, all my pain disappeared," the father added. "Now I don’t know what to do with this pain. I don’t know how to live with this.”

The mother of a boy slain in the strike told NBC News that the school also called her and told her to quickly come pick up her child.

“By the time we arrived, the entire school had collapsed on top of the children,” she said. “People were pulling out children’s arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads.”

On Wednesday, Middle East Eye published a partial list containing the names and ages of 51 children—26 boys and 25 girls—one infant, and eight women killed in the school strike.

Thousands of mourners thronged the streets of Minab on Tuesday as funerals were held for the strike's victims.

It is not known whether the school, which is located near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound, was deliberately targeted.

“All that I know is that we’re investigating that. Of course, we never target civilians," said US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who oversees a military whose 21st century wars have killed more than 400,000 noncombatants, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the Pentagon "would be investigating that, if that was our strike."

"Clearly, the United States would not deliberately target a school," Rubio added.

Since the late 20th century, the US has bombed—either deliberately or through inadequate target vetting and identification—schools in countries including Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

If carried out by the US, Saturday's strike in Minab is likely the deadliest American school bombing since 182 students, staff, and other civilians were massacred in an apparently deliberate secret strike on a school in Laos—the most heavily bombed country ever—during the Vietnam War.

Israel has bombed all levels of schools in Gaza as part of what critics have called a deliberate policy of scholasticide.

North Carolina-based independent journalist Lauren Steiner told Common Dreams Wednesday that the double-tap tactic is "beyond evil."

Other such strikes have been reported during the US-Israeli war on Iran, including the Sunday evening bombing of Niloofar Square in Tehran, where people were celebrating the end of their daily Ramadan fast.

“Suddenly there was the noise and explosion," one survivor, who was enjoying the evening at a café before the bombing, told Drop Site News. "We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone’s hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor."

“When the second one hit, suddenly everything exploded," he added. "The windows all shattered... One of my friends whom I don’t know that well, he was sitting here... He was severed in half. Half of him was thrown to the side. I put him back together and placed him where he was. A piece of his brain was thrown here on the floor.”

The IRCS says more than 1,000 Iranians have been killed during four days of US and Israeli bombing, with Iran's retaliatory strikes killing six US service members, 11 Israelis, and a number of people in Gulf states that have come under Iranian bombardment.

"The enemy is exploiting every possible tactic to inflict maximum harm on our people," IRCS spokesperson Mojtaba Khaledi said Tuesday. "We beg the public: Do not rush to bombed areas. The first moments after an explosion are the most dangerous—some munitions are programmed to detonate again, turning rescuers and survivors into additional victims."

Some of the more infamous US double-tap strikes include the April 1999 Grdelica bridge bombing in Yugoslavia, which happened while a passenger train traveling from Belgrade, Serbia to Greece was crossing, killing more than 20 people; the March 2019 drone strike in Deir Ezzor, Syria that killed scores of civilians along with some Islamic State fighters; the April 2025 attack on Ras Isa port in al-Hudaydah, Yemen that massacred 84 civilians; and the bombing last September of a boat allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea.

Israeli has carried out many double-tap strikes in Gaza, including last summer's attack on Nasser Hospital that killed more than 20 people including five journalists, and the July 2024 massacre of more than 90 people in a purported "safe zone" in al-Mawasi. Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation.