{
  "id": 9575411,
  "title": "Minab School Strike: How Outdated Military Data, AI & Reduced Civilian Checks Combined To Kill More Than 150 People",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/24/minab-school-strike-how-outdated-military-data-ai-reduced-civilian",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-09-24T14:51:17.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Free Press Journal",
    "slug": "free-press-journal",
    "url": "https://www.freepressjournal.in/world/minab-school-strike-how-outdated-military-data-ai-reduced-civilian-checks-combined-to-kill-more-than-150-people"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "On February 28, 2020, a series of Tomahawk missiles targeted Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran, resulting in the deaths of over 150 people, including at least 123 children. The United States and Israel were conducting a joint military campaign against Iran at the time. Iran accused the United States of the attack, while a subsequent UN investigation concluded that the strike, along with another US attack that day, constituted war crimes.\n\nA Bloomberg investigation revealed several factors that contributed to the preventable failures that led to the tragic loss of life. These factors included outdated intelligence, an accelerated targeting process, reduced civilian-protection personnel, and excessive reliance on artificial intelligence (AI). The school had been classified as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facility in the US military's databases, but commercial satellite imagery showed that the building had been transformed into a children's facility by around 2017. However, this information was not incorporated into the primary intelligence database used for military targeting, as it resided in a separate system.\n\nThe Pentagon's internal inquiry focused on the use of the Maven Smart System, an AI-enabled platform developed by Palantir Technologies. This system combined over 150 data inputs to assist military personnel in organizing information and supporting decisions regarding targeting and command and control. During the Iran campaign, the system played a prominent role in the targeting process. US Central Command personnel sometimes relied too heavily on Maven and expected it to detect outdated intelligence or contradictions within the information used to evaluate potential targets.\n\nThe Pentagon investigation also highlighted the speed of the military operation, which compressed the targeting process. Over 1,000 Iranian targets were struck during the first 24 hours of the war, with the Minab site being processed through Maven along with other locations. The outdated IRGC classification and the compressed timeline contributed to Maven recommending the school as a target for the first day of the operation.",
  "summary": "Two Tomahawk missiles struck the Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School in Iran's southern city of Minab on February 28, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children, as the US and Israel launched their joint military campaign against Iran. The two-storey school stood on land that had previously formed part of a military compound. Iran blamed the United States for the attack, while…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}