Israeli strike kills 85 at girls’ school in southern Iran as tensions soar across region

An Israeli attack hit an elementary girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province, on Saturday, killing at least 85 people, according to Iranian state media. Many others were injured as workers continued to clear the wreckage, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.The strike comes amid a wave of joint US-Israeli attacks across Iran and retaliatory strikes by Tehran that has heightened regional tensions. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi shared a photo of the destroyed school on X, saying it killed “innocent children” and warning, “These crimes against the Iranian people will not go unanswered.”Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei also called the attack a “blatant crime” and urged the United Nations Security Council to take action. Mehr news agency reported that at least two students were killed in another Israeli strike on a school east of Tehran.Israel and US on Saturday launched a daylight "preventive attack" against Iran. Iran carried out retaliatory strikes on American military bases across the Middle East under an operation it named “Truthful Promise 4”, hours after joint US-Israel airstrikes hit Tehran. The Revolutionary Guard said it targeted the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, bases in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and military sites in Israel.Strikes in Iran reportedly also targeted areas near the offices of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News that, to his knowledge, both supreme leader Khamenei and president Masoud Pezeshkian were alive.