At least 85 people have been killed in an airstrike on an elementary school in southern Iran, the government in Tehran claims.

The majority of the dead are schoolgirls aged between seven and 12, according to the regime-controlled news outlets Tasnim and Fars.

Missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the the city of Minab, in Hormozgan province, on Saturday morning as the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran.

Sources inside Iran told the Daily Mail that reports from the regime should be viewed with skepticism as a propaganda offensive is being waged under the fog of war.

A teacher at the school told the London-based outlet Middle East Eye that she saw bodies on classroom benches. She had stepped out when she heard the blast and returned to find carnage. 

‘I felt like I had gone mute. I couldn’t speak,’ she said. ‘You could hear the sound of children crying and screaming.’

There were 170 girls at the school at the time of the attack as Saturday is the first day of the working week in Iran.

Footage shared on Telegram by accounts linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps showed citizens digging through the rubble and smoke rising from the school building. 

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