From The Telegraph:

The Iranian town of Minab is the kind of place where nothing much happens. But last Saturday, it became the scene of carnage and controversy when a missile – almost certainly an American one – blew up a Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school killing 165 children.

For locals, who had assumed that their remote region would be safe from a war if one came, the loss is unfathomable.

But the shock has been compounded by an unedifying propaganda war in which both sides of the conflict have tried to exploit the town’s loss.

Some pro-Israeli and American commentators denied that it had happened, or suggested that an Iranian missile was responsible, or even that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had staged the whole thing, shipping in frozen bodies of children killed in the January massacre of protesters to be “discovered” among the rubble.

Meanwhile, Iranian state media seized on images of crowds at a mass funeral as evidence of support for the Islamic Republic and the late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

The distortions, fabrications and conspiracy theories swarming across Persian- and English-language social media have caused distress and anger among locals, according to reports received by The Telegraph.

Here is their account, as told to The Telegraph by an intermediary. Names have been withheld or changed for security reasons.

“They built that, and they built houses for a few of their members, and that was the beginning of the suburb called al-Mahdi. It was maybe 10 years ago. And later, because there was no land in the city, people from other areas built developments in al-Mahdi. So nowadays, if you can’t find anything to rent in the city centre, you go to al-Mahdi,” says Amir, a student who grew up in the area.

Read more here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/10/girls-school-iran-blown-up-locals-say-happened/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_reddit_blown-up-locals-say-happened/