On February 28, 2026 — the first day of the Iran war and the same day as the Minab elementary school bombing that killed more than 150 — the U.S. also struck a sports hall and adjacent elementary school in Lamerd, southern Iran. At least 21 people were killed, later reported as 22, and over 100 injured, including young volleyball players during training.
A New York Times visual investigation published in late March 2026 analyzed video and photographic evidence and concluded the weapon used was a Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) — a short-range ballistic missile that had never been tested in combat before this war. The PrSM only completed prototype testing in July 2025. The missile detonates just above its target and blasts a huge number of tungsten pellets outward. NYT analysts found aftermath photos showing buildings pockmarked with dozens of small holes consistent with tungsten pellet impacts.
Named victims include Elham Zeri, age 12, a fifth-grade volleyball player; Helma Ahmadizadeh, age 10, a fourth grader; Zahra, age 16, the daughter of teacher Hossein Gholami; and a 2-year-old child. Teacher Gholami described the scene: “The smell of blood and burns covered everything. The survivors were injured with fractures and burns from the shrapnel.”
The school and sports hall are near an IRGC military compound but have been walled off from it for at least 15 years. The sports hall is identified as a civilian facility on Apple Maps, Wikimapia, and Google Maps. Despite this, CENTCOM celebrated the PrSM's combat debut — Admiral Brad Cooper described it as having “leveraged innovation to create dilemmas for the enemy.”
Trump blamed Iran for the strike: “No, in my opinion, and based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran.” Iran does not possess PrSM missiles. Nuclear nonproliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis said: “While we knew PrSM was fired, this is the first look we've gotten at the business end of the system.”
On September 17, 2026, a UN fact-finding mission reported, citing a local official, that 22 people were killed in the strike. It found “reasonable grounds to believe” the weapon was a PrSM and that the U.S., “by choosing to use the PrSM missile in a populated civilian area,” launched an attack “reckless as to the likely extent of death or injury” (see UN Fact-Finding Mission Finds Reasonable Grounds to Believe the U.S. Committed War Crimes in Strikes on an Iranian School and Sports Center).
Correction (September 17, 2026): an earlier version of this entry described the Minab school as a girls' school where 168 were killed. The UN mission describes a school for girls and boys aged 6 to 13 and cites a final local toll of 156.