As a fragile cease-fire takes hold, Iran is sorting through the wreckage from U.S.-Israeli strikes, which have exacted a heavy toll on its civilian infrastructure. The New York Times has verified damage to 22 schools and 17 health care facilities, a fraction of the devastation in the war so far.
The scale of devastation is likely far greater than The Times’s analysis. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2 that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed in the war.
The Times confirmed damage by using high-resolution satellite imagery and by verifying footage from state media or social media sites, including X, Telegram, Instagram and Facebook. The analysis was limited to schools and health care facilities that were damaged on or after Feb. 28, the first day of the war.
The Times’s analysis shows that the damage was often caused by strikes in crowded neighborhoods — especially in Tehran, a capital of 10 million people that is as densely populated as New York City.
The Times was not able to verify the total number of people killed at schools and health care facilities. At least 1,701 civilians have been killed in Iran as of Tuesday, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Among them are students, teachers and health care workers.
In most instances examined by The Times, the intended target of a strike was not clear. In some cases, schools and health care facilities were damaged by nearby strikes; others were directly hit. It was not always possible to determine whether the strikes were by the U.S. or Israeli military.
39 structures with verified damage in Iran
Schools and hospitals hold some of the strongest protections of all civilian infrastructure under international humanitarian law, and intentional attacks on them could be considered war crimes. Even strikes on military targets that damage nearby schools and hospitals can violate international law, experts say, and military commanders are expected to take stringent measures to prevent and minimize such harm.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other American officials have insisted that the U.S. military is acting with precision.
During the second week of the war, Mr. Hegseth accused Iran of “moving rocket launchers into civilian neighborhoods near schools, near hospitals to try to prevent our ability to strike.” He has not provided any proof for this assertion, and when asked by The Times to provide such evidence, the Pentagon declined to comment.
The Pentagon also declined to comment on The Times’s analysis of schools and health care facilities damaged during the war.
Early strikes on schools are among the deadliest
By far the deadliest strike on civilians came on Feb. 28, the first day of the war, when the Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School was bombed in the southern Iranian town of Minab. The strike killed at least 175 people, most of them children, according to Iranian health officials.
An ongoing investigation by the U.S. military found that American forces were responsible for the bombing, according to U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the preliminary findings. The military had used outdated information and labeled the school as a military target, the early findings said.
The site of the school was originally part of an Iranian naval base, but according to a visual investigation by The Times, the building had been fenced off from the naval base for at least 10 years. It had clearly visible play areas, and its walls were painted blue and pink.
U.S. officials have emphasized that the findings of the investigation were preliminary and that there were still unanswered questions about why the outdated information had not been double checked, said the people briefed on the inquiry. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said the investigation is “still ongoing.”
On the same day, in Abyek, west of Tehran, a blast from a nearby strike ripped through a boys elementary school, blowing out windows and sending dozens of children on the playground running for cover.
Satellite image analysis and video footage verified by The Times showed that the strike had apparently targeted a communications tower less than 400 feet away. One boy was killed, Iranian state media reported. The footage showed that he appeared to have been hit by debris on the playground.
Verified footage showed that another strike that day hit near a high school in Tehran’s Narmak district, in a residential area where Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was known to live. Two students were killed, according to Mehr, a semiofficial news agency.
A fourth strike that day, using a new U.S.-made ballistic missile, hit a sports hall, an adjacent elementary school and a blood transfusion center near a military facility in the city of Lamerd, according to weapons experts and a visual analysis by The Times. The sports hall was being used by a young girls’ volleyball team at the time.
At least six people, including at least four children, were killed in this strike, according to a Times review of a list of fatalities released by an Iranian news agency, images of caskets posted online, recordings of funeral speeches and reference photos of the victims.
What was damaged in the Lamerd strike
As the war got underway, the Iranian government suspended classes in schools across the country. But U.S.-Israeli strikes continued to damage school buildings for weeks.
Some, such as the Shaghayegh Girls’ School in Khomein and a building at the Iran University for Science and Technology in Tehran, were directly hit and reduced to ruins, according to analysis of video and satellite imagery.
Bombings near hospitals forced evacuations
Health facilities have also been substantially damaged, impacting patients, health care workers and emergency crews.
On March 1, the facade of the Gandhi Hospital in northern Tehran was ripped off during heavy strikes that appeared to target Iranian state television facilities across the street.
Videos taken on a government media tour from outside and inside the hospital show the extent of the strike’s damage.
The hospital was forced to evacuate its patients, including at least one infant in an incubator, according to Iran’s health ministry, hospital officials in interviews with Iranian state media, and footage verified by The Times.
“We have newborn babies,” Dr. Mohammad Hassan Bani Assad, the hospital’s president, told Iranian state television. “We had eight patients in the I.C.U., two in critical condition. Women giving birth. Embryos in our fertility department.”
The bombing forced another hospital complex in the city of Bushehr, in southern Iran, to evacuate babies.
In footage shared by the Iranian Red Crescent Society and verified by The Times, an emergency worker grew emotional as he looked over infants in the hospital’s damaged newborn ward.
“If we disconnect what they’re hooked up to, they will die,” he said. “Look at them. This poor kid. This dear child.”
Under international humanitarian law, military commanders planning a strike must consider the risk of incidental damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure. In each attack, they are supposed to weigh the expected military gains against expected civilian harm, and take precautions to minimize that harm.
Experts said that Mr. Hegseth has dismantled many of the systems meant to help the United States abide by such obligations. They noted that the defense secretary has fired the military’s top lawyers, who advise military leaders on domestic and international laws of armed conflict, and that he has closed Pentagon offices and terminated positions designed to reduce and respond to civilian harm.
Mr. Hegseth has also boasted about his efforts to scale back what he has called “stupid rules of engagement.”
Oona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, said those rules “were developed precisely to prevent this kind of civilian harm,” referring to the damage caused to Iran’s schools and hospitals. Ms. Hathaway was one of over 100 U.S.-based international law experts who signed an open letter this month expressing “profound concern over serious violations of international law” during the war.
On Monday, Mr. Trump, who has threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” brushed off a question about the possibility that U.S. attacks on civilian infrastructure could amount to war crimes. Iran has also been accused of striking civilian infrastructure in the Middle East.
Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, the military headquarters leading the war, told The Times that it takes reports of civilian harm “seriously” and that it does not “deliberately target civilians.”
He declined to answer detailed questions about the steps it was taking to minimize civilian harm in Iran, citing the ongoing investigation into the strike that killed scores of children at the school in Minab. He referred other questions to the Defense Department, which also declined to comment, citing the investigation.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it “operates in accordance with the law of armed conflict” and takes precautions, “as much as possible under the circumstances,” to mitigate civilian harm. The military “invests significant efforts in assessing potential civilian harm” before a strike, the statement added.
Many strikes hit Iran’s dense capital
About half of the damaged schools and health care facilities identified by The Times’s analysis were in Tehran, a crowded and typically bustling city, where the bombing has been intense.
According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, more than 46,000 residential and commercial units have also been damaged in the capital.
18 structures with verified damage in Tehran
Delaram Sina Psychiatric Hospital
1 school,
3 health care facilities
Imam Reza Elementary School
Shahid Bahonar Middle School
Arian Pouya Elementary School
Hedayat Boys’ High School
Shahid Mahallati Elementary School
During the war, the United States and Israel have struck not only the facilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, but also government buildings, intelligence offices and police stations.
As in many cities around the world, those sites are often near schools, hospitals and residential buildings. In Tehran, multiple strikes hit the police headquarters in the Vanak neighborhood during the first days of the war and damaged several nearby hospitals, according to satellite imagery analyzed by The Times.
Health care facilities near police headquarters in Tehran
A video shot from near the Red Crescent building and verified by The Times shows a massive smoke plume rising from the site of the police headquarters.
Instances verified by The Times of damage to schools and health care facilities caused by strikes on civilian neighborhoods are “within the scope of foreseeable effects” that military commanders are meant to minimize, said Mara Revkin, a professor and scholar of armed conflict at the Duke University School of Law.
The World Health Organization has verified at least 23 attacks on the Iranian health care system, including 11 attacks on health care facilities, said Dr. Hanan Balkhy, the W.H.O.’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean. Six of the 11 facility attacks that the W.H.O. has verified were in Tehran.
Iran’s health care system is still “standing on its feet,” but operating under increasing strain, with disruptions to patient services and continuity of care for chronic conditions becoming more difficult, Dr. Balkhy said, adding, “Destroying health care and access to health care and doctors and medication is harm.”
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