Bloomberg reported on Thursday that top Pentagon officials have expressed that they will withhold the release of an internal report on the US bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, southern Iran, which massacred at least 120 children, through the midterm elections.
According to an earlier Bloomberg investigation into the attack, within hours of the strikes, Pentagon personnel were aware that the US was responsible, but the Trump administration has still not admitted to carrying out the attack.
The new Bloomberg report said that advisors to US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have conveyed to other Pentagon personnel that the report on the massacre, which found flawed intelligence, outdated imagery, and an overreliance on AI contributed to the attack, will not be shared with the public before the November 3 elections. Officials said the investigation has been all but complete for several months.
The exact toll in the bombing varies, with Bloomberg putting the number of children killed at 123, while the general prosecutor in Minab said in early April that the final death toll was 156, including 120 students — 73 boys, 47 girls — 26 female teachers, the unborn child of a pregnant teacher, seven parents, a school bus driver, and a technician at a nearby clinic.
Drop Site News recently published an extensive report on the massacre from the perspective of the parents of the people who experienced it, including parents and relatives of children who were killed, children who survived, rescue workers, and teachers.
The massacre is one of the worst US war crimes since the Vietnam War, and it came after Hegseth hollowed out mechanisms meant to reduce civilian harm. Last month, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced a resolution to impeach Hegseth that included an article about how the Pentagon chief ignored US laws meant to minimize civilian harm and tied it to the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School.
“The elementary school was struck after Secretary Hegseth sought to repeal congressionally mandated civilian-protection requirements, dismantled the Department’s civilian-harm mitigation infrastructure, removed the senior-most Judge Advocates General responsible for independent legal oversight, stripped civilian protection from the National Defense Strategy, and publicly denigrated legal restraints on military force as obstacles to ‘maximum lethality,'” the resolution reads.
