Missiles fired by US, Israel hit two schools near Tehran: Iranian media

Missiles fired by the United States and Israel have hit two schools in the town of Parand, southwest of Tehran, Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency has reported.

The agency shared photos of damage and debris in what appeared to be a classroom and said several nearby residential units also sustained damage in the attack on Thursday.

The attack came just six days after what Iran has described as a US-Israeli one on a girls’ school in the southern city of Minab, where 165 schoolgirls and staff were killed, the day the US and Israel launched a war on Iran, which has ignited exchanges of fire across the Middle East.

Iranian authorities put the final death toll from the Minab attack at 165 people, most of them girls ages seven to 12. At least 95 other people were wounded in the attack.

As the images of the carnage spread on social media platforms, Israeli and US authorities sought to distance themselves from the attack, the US stating it was unaware that a school had been hit, and some Israeli sources claiming the site was “part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base”.

However, an analysis by Al Jazeera’s digital investigations unit found that the school had been clearly separate from an adjacent military site for at least 10 years. The investigation also showed that the strike pattern raises fundamental questions about the accuracy of intelligence information on which the bombing was based.

“This is how ‘rescue’ promised by Mr Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had said after the attack on Monday.

Repeating Gaza tactics in Iran?

Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera’s AJ+ that Israel dismantles entire systems by hitting schools, public infrastructure and state institutions, comparing its attacks to those it carried out in Gaza.

“What we are really seeing in Iran is a continuation and extension of what Israel’s been attempting to do in the last two and a half years [in Gaza],” he said.

“There are straight lines between what Israel has attempted to do … in Gaza, to completely decimate and collapse the systems that existed there, to what we are seeing in Iran, on a much more massive and dangerous scale, to bring down the Islamic Republic and to cause as much devastation as possible.”

More than 3,600 civilian sites have been damaged in attacks attributed to the US and Israel, according to figures released by the Iranian Red Crescent Society, cited by the Iranian government on X.

The head of the Iranian Red Crescent reportedly said 3,643 civilian locations had been targeted so far, including 3,090 homes, 528 commercial centres, 13 medical facilities and nine Red Crescent centres.

The official said several major hospitals and other rehabilitation and welfare centres have been damaged.