Overview
- Two Tomahawk missiles hit Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab on February 28, 2026, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children, according to multiple investigations.
- Pentagon investigators say a cascade of failures led to the strike, including outdated satellite imagery, intelligence that still listed the site as a military compound, and an analyst’s 2019 note that never reached the targeting database.
- The review found CENTCOM personnel relied heavily on Palantir’s Maven Smart System to speed target selection, condensing hours of human checks into minutes and creating overreliance on the tool to flag data errors.
- Staff cuts to civilian‑harm mitigation units under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth left few or no reviewers to assess the Minab site before the attack, and compressed targeting timelines from a rapid opening assault narrowed verification time.
- The Pentagon’s internal report is said to be mostly finished but remains unreleased, Palantir denies responsibility for the underlying data, and the UN finding that there are reasonable grounds to call the strike a war crime raises the prospect of legal and diplomatic consequences.