BBC visits Iran school where strike killed 120 children

0:03Nawal Al-Maghafi:Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. We're beginning the programme in the Middle East, talking about the consequences of the US decision to go to war with Iran back in February, consequences which continue to develop right now, the upsurge in violence in the exchange of strikes between Iran and the US, and also now the threat to oil shipments spreading to the Red Sea. There's also been a development that happened just before we came on air, and that is a social media post from Donald Trump. It often happens this way, an early morning post from him.

0:39Nawal Al-Maghafi:This one seemed to add new terms to the thing that we were leading on yesterday. It was headline news around the world, the US and Saudi concluding a deal whereby the US would give Saudi Arabia nuclear technology. Well, Donald Trump has said that that deal is now totally subject, as he put it, to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, so establishing essentially diplomatic, economic and security ties with Israel. It seems to be quite a big development. We'll have more on that in 15 minutes. First, though, we're beginning with an investigation. It was back on the very first day of the US-Israeli war in Iran that a missile hit a primary school in Minab in the south of the country, killing 156 people, 120 of them children.

1:30Nawal Al-Maghafi:Almost five months on, the US has still not released the findings of its investigation into the tragedy, although media reports of a preliminary US military assessment do suggest that they were likely to have been responsible. It's a story which the BBC has been doggedly trying to pursue from the get-go. Just to take our State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman, he's directly asked face-to-face questions about the strike over the last few months to President Donald Trump, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and early on in the war to Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary. Thank you. Come back to the BBC.

2:04Nawal Al-Maghafi:Can you give us an update on what the administration knows, what you know now about the reported strike on a girls' school in southern Iran on Saturday? All I know, all I can say is that we're investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets, but we're taking a look and investigating that. Red tie in front. Just on the basis that with the information you would have, your reconnaissance abilities, ability to gather information. I mean, it's several days on now. So is there any clarity on whose munition this was? We're investigating it. Well, that was back in March. In May, when Tom asked President Trump for an update about the attack, he was told that it was still under investigation and that the BBC was a fake outfit, as he put it.

2:47Nawal Al-Maghafi:So what do we know? BBC World Service's senior international correspondent, Nawal Al McGuffey, has been given rare access to visit the school site. Her report contains distressing testimony. In the blazing heat, the search continues. Months after a missile hit the Shajar al-Tayyab school in Minab, people here are still looking for what remains of those who were killed. The authorities were keen for us to visit because this attack has become a big part of Iran's case to the world. Local officials say 156 people died here, including 120 children. I've been teaching here for six years and I'm a first grade teacher.

3:34We meet Amine Nadimi. She leads us through what's left of the building. The walls that remain are bright, with painted balloons, flowers and children's writing. She points up to where the girls' classrooms once were and to where they collapsed into the boys' classrooms below. You can't call it a school. Here there are only walls, that smell of death, grief and the blood that was shed here. Parents, desperate to find their children, arrived to a horrific scene after the attack in February.

4:13I thought, why are they coming here? There's no one inside. Everyone has fled. I didn't know they were all under the rubble. Reza was one of the first emergency responders to arrive. I saw one of my relatives. He was begging to just found my child, found my son. I couldn't tell her that your son is not alive. Experts say evidence indicates it was a U.S. strike that hit the Shajar al-Tayyabah school in Minab, southern Iran. They've also questioned whether the school was hit because of its proximity to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps site. The U.S. is yet to release the findings of its own inquiry.

4:54Many had hoped foreign intervention would bring political change after months of bloody anti-regime protests. Reza's adamant there was no military activity in the area. The place of the army and everything that was near here has changed. There wasn't any army or anyone that were related to this regime around here.

5:21I'm walking around the cemetery where many of the children killed in the Manab school attack have been buried and around me there are so many families that have come to visit their young children they come here every day i can see some of the siblings of those that were killed kissing the photos of their loved ones that stand by their grave there are some that are so young that they're playing in between the different tombstones there is row after row after a row of graves. It's a really sobering place to be. Masome lost her nine-year-old daughter, Satayesh, in the attack. The school had gone.

6:07There was only the smell of smoke and children's hair. I saw a hand, a foot. They had been torn to pieces. Like many of the parents here, her grief has become intertwined with anger. May Trump be destroyed, may he drown in the blood of these children, and may he be afflicted with such suffering that everyone hears about it. In a country deeply divided over its authoritarian leadership, the strike on this school has united many in grief, a stark reminder that every war brings with it a devastating human cost.

6:47Nawal Al-Maghafi:Nuala McGaffey reporting from southern Iran. She was there on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organisations operating in Iran. Well, listening to that has been Charles Blaha, the former long-serving director of the US State Department's Office of Security and Human Rights. He retired in 2023. Mr Blaha, thank you for your time here on News Air. Given that you're retired, I presume you don't quite know whether it's the case of whether this investigation just hasn't been completed or whether it's being sat on.

7:24Nawal Al-Maghafi:But given that it's been almost five months, I mean, is that a is that a sort of reasonable length of time that one might imagine it would take for an investigation? Or would you have expected it to have been released by now? Well, thank you for having me and thank you for following this story. And to answer your question, it's pretty clear that this investigation, that the government is sitting on it. For a long time, as you reported in your lead-in piece, the administration's line on this, both from Secretary Hicks and from the president, it has been, this is under investigation. As time passed, that no longer became credible.

8:07And given the resources that the Central Command has, it's likely that the Central Command had the complete picture of what happened within 24 hours. But that under-investigation line became increasingly less credible. And now we're hearing more statements that indicate that there is some sort of an investigation that has been complete, but it's being reviewed. That is another delay mechanism. Why does this need to be reviewed? Who's reviewing it? And what's the timeline to end the review? This is just another delay mechanism.

8:46Nawal Al-Maghafi:Could it be argued from within the Defense Department that, look, you know, the war is continuing? We may be committed to releasing the results of a full investigation, but we wouldn't want to release anything now which might tell the Iranians, you know, what sort of intelligence we're working on, how we plan our targeting of certain sites, things that could aid the enemy, in other words. That is really not credible. If you're talking about the mentality that Secretary Hegseth has, his mentality is simply that Iran is evil and that he won't broach any criticism of United States forces. multiple credible sources over the past weeks and months have established that this was a U.S.

9:42a U.S. strike. It was a Tomahawk missile. And and although some of the details vary, they've established that the U.S. used outdated intelligence. If what what I hope has happened since then, is I hope that the Central Command has revised its targeting procedures so that they don't use outdated intelligence. But I do think at a minimum, what has to happen is the U.S. has to acknowledge that this was a U.S. strike. We have to apologize for it. And we do need to pay reparations to the victims and to their families. All that can be done without compromising any operational details.

10:26Nawal Al-Maghafi:Right. And just in terms of how far, I mean, that's the sort of moral case, if the US, as many indications are, was responsible for sort of saying, look, we made a terrible mistake here. How far is it potentially a matter of legal jeopardy if that mistake was made on the basis of, I mean, put sort of malice or intent to one side, but on the basis of recklessness? Well, that's actually the key question, isn't it? Because international humanitarian law requires an attacking party for this kind of a strike to distinguish between a civilian target and a military target and to take all feasible precautions to ensure that there are no civilian deaths or at least not excess civilian deaths.

11:17given the United States' the Trump administration's stance on international law I would not expect that it would submit to any international mechanisms

11:30Nawal Al-Maghafi:And just from your experience I know that you're in state rather than the Pentagon but how much disquiet do you think there might be within the military over this whole process? Well I think There is some. I think there are, despite Secretary Hegseth's dismantling of the civilian protection architecture within the Defense Department, I do believe that there still are people in the Defense Department who care about these kinds of things. However, I do think that there is fault up the chain of command for approving a strike based on outdated intelligence. That should never have happened. And I hope that the Defense Department has learned from this.

12:23I hope the Defense Department has changed its targeting procedures. And I hope the Defense Department has taken steps to replace some of the personnel, the civilian harm prevention experts who have been let go.

12:37Nawal Al-Maghafi:Charles Blaha, former director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Security and Human Rights. Thank you very much for joining us.

12:49Nawal Al-Maghafi:You're with NewsHour. It's live from the BBC. I'm Tim Franks. We began the programme hearing about that attack on the school in southern Iran, not far from the critical waterway of the Strait of Hormuz. There's another vital narrow shipping channel, the other side of the Gulf, at the southern end of the Red Sea. It's called the Bab al-Mandab Strait. And it's where the Yemen-based, Iran-backed Houthi movement says that it's attacked two Saudi oil tankers, which has led to another surge in oil prices. Elizabeth Kendall is the president of Girton College, Cambridge, and a Yemen expert, expert across the area.

13:26Nawal Al-Maghafi:How important is the Bab al-Mandab to Saudi Arabia and its oil shipments? The Bab al-Mandab, which is the entrance, the main entrance to the Red Sea and hence up into Suez, on the western side of the Arabian Peninsula, is incredibly important. Prior to the Houthis' first beginning, the strikes on the Red Sea at the end of 2023, so this is the first time around, roughly 17 ,000 ships would go through that route every year. And it accounted for about 12 % of global seaborne trade. So it was incredibly important. Subsequently, its importance lessened a little as ships started to take longer routes.

14:11But it has been navigable pretty much in 2026. So this is quite a surprise. And it's particularly painful for the Saudis because with Hormuz being closed on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, they had managed to redirect around about 70 % of their crude oil exports across the peninsula to come out on the Red Sea port of Yanbu. So if that now is also under threat, that puts a very tight squeeze on them. And it's worth remembering that if the Be 'er Belmandeb is closed by the Houthis, then that means that the VLCCs, the very large crude carriers, can't get up to Yanbu because these tankers, these massive tankers, are too big to get through sewers.

15:03So they can't enter from the north.

15:05Nawal Al-Maghafi:Elizabeth, I do want to ask you, if I may, just about this other development that's happened And just as we've been about to come on air today, which is an early morning social media post from Donald Trump saying that this nuclear accord that was signed yesterday between the US and Saudi over the US providing them with nuclear technology so that they can produce their own nuclear power. that it is contingent on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, which is this essentially normalising relations with Israel, which is something Saudi Arabia, I mean, has been holding out against, and certainly since October 2023 and the aftermath of the Hamas attacks.

16:05Nawal Al-Maghafi:Just tell me what you read into this. It sounds as though President Trump is trying to row back on the big announcement of a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. It sounds like he's now trying to find a way that's an elegant exit from anything too serious on that front. And therefore, he's mentioned that Saudi has to sign up to the Abraham Accords, which Saudi has very clearly stated that it won't do without a solution for Palestine being in place. Saudi has its own conditions. And perhaps it's worth stating here that the significance of the Abraham Accords tends to have been perhaps overstated by the Trump administration that brought them in originally.

16:59You have to put them into context in that there There are around 2 billion Muslims globally and 49 Muslim-majority countries. Only four of those countries have signed up to the Abraham Accords. So here it sounds like another attempt to make a transactional deal with Saudi Arabia. You can have your nuclear deal if you sign up to the Abraham Accords. But not everyone works in quite such a transactional way. I'd be interested to see how Saudi reacts and whether it sticks to its own conditions of a solution for Palestine.

17:34Nawal Al-Maghafi:And that was Elizabeth Kendall, president of Gerton College, Cambridge, and an expert on Arab affairs.

17:46Nawal Al-Maghafi:As artificial intelligence becomes part of everyday life, a recent Google search trends report in Nigeria shows a sharp rise in the number of young people in Africa's most populous country using the tool to teach themselves foreign languages, including sign language. The trend comes as many young professionals continue to leave Nigeria in search of better opportunities amid the country's big economic challenges and high cost of living while others are seeking opportunities beyond their local communities. The BBC's Makawachi Okafor has this report. Hey Gugu, how do I say I'm hungry in Thai? This is Abigail Eitayo, a travel and lifestyle content creator in Lagos, Nigeria.

18:29She uses AI to learn languages before and during her trips abroad. I don't really use language learning apps, to be honest, because I can just have a one-on-one conversation with AI. I can say, pretend you're a friend and I'm learning how to speak this language for the very first time. How would we communicate? And I'll say, I'll start in French and you can continue that way. In Thai, that's... For Abigail, AI is not a classroom. It feels like a real conversation where she can practice, make mistakes and learn instantly. For me, when AI came about, and this is where I used it the most when I was in Thailand.

19:07When you want to eat something to know what the ingredient contains, I would snap the ingredient, just put some AI, just list out. So it lists out everything as it is written there in the language you understand. She says AI also helps her navigate daily life abroad, from reading food labels to understanding new environments. She's not alone. Samuel Aku is also using AI to stay connected with family abroad. I would definitely want to go to Norway. And yeah, using AI has helped because now it's easier to speak with my cousins and the rest also. And sometimes they're like, oh, how are you learning fast, actually?

19:43And now I can type with it. And I'm really good at typing with it. In recent years, many young professionals have left Nigeria in what is described as a brain drain as the economy continues to struggle with a high cost of living. Data from recent Google search trends in Nigeria show rising interest in languages such as German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and even sign language, with many young Nigerians now turning to AI to learn. If I'm going to other countries also, I would gladly still use AI to learn at the end of the day. In Lagos, Nigeria's commercial hub, the city is home to a rich mix of local and international languages and cultures.

20:25Now something is changing. AI is becoming part of everyday learning, including how people learn languages. I'm on my way to meet Google West Africa spokesperson, Taiwokola Ugunlade, to learn more about the company's latest trends report. There have been quite a number of interests that we've seen from the data. Personally, the one that surprised me the most is AI and sign language. is really, really mind-blowing and very interesting, right? Because I'm Nigerian. I've been Nigerian for all my life, over 40-something years. And sign language isn't something that you hear most people talk about. He says language learning is no longer just about communication.

21:10It's about opportunity, work, and global connection. For many young Nigerians, learning a new language no longer begins in a classroom. It begins with a prompt.

21:22Nawal Al-Maghafi:And that report was from a correspondent in Nigeria looking at that issue of artificial intelligence and language and how helpful a tool it can be. That was from Makawachi Okafor. You're listening to NewsHour.

21:46Nawal Al-Maghafi:Welcome back to NewsHour. If you were listening yesterday, you may have heard us talk about the tech company OpenAI, revealing that its advanced artificial intelligence systems went rogue and hacked another AI company to steal information they needed to pass an internal evaluation. The AI agents targeted one of the world's largest hubs for sharing AI models. It's known as Hugging Face. The BBC's Rob Young has been speaking to Thomas Wolf, the co-founder of Hugging Face. What did he make of this AI breakout? out? When it took place roughly 10 days ago, started on the weekend before past weekend, we were still able to rather quickly identify and stop the progression of the attacker.

22:26At that time, we had no idea if it was a human hacker, we had no idea if it was an AI and what the attacker was looking for, basically. And so now you know that it was an AI autonomous attack, an AI system that had decided to attack yours. What do you make of that? Are you impressed? Are Are you wowed by the sophistication of it or are you unnerved by it? You have to know we're really very visible in the AI world, right? And so we are really a regular source for human hackers to attack. And this for the first time was a very different type of traces. We had like very short time, 17 ,000 events coming for Vius IP and focusing on one of the things that I would say human attackers don't really tackle so much, which is the data set and the place where we store private evals, right?

23:14So I think the first thing for us is it helped us understand what happened when OpenAI reached out and said, hey, this was actually our model. But the second thing is I expect this to become just more frequent in the future, right? This is going to be one of the most common type of cyber attack we'll see. On the positive side, what we saw is the defense that we use, which is based on open source model. You just have to be able to use them fast to deploy them, because when an attacker starts to be inside your infrastructure, it's a matter of reacting. But just to be clear what you're saying there, you are saying that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, and it appears to be getting more sophisticated almost by the week, these kind of attacks where companies' data is infiltrated, stolen, is just going to become more commonplace.

24:02And so is it the case then that no data is actually safe if it is held on a computer? To be honest, since cybersecurity is just a regular development, right, we've increasingly had more and more complex tools that enable hackers to attack more and more complex systems. And the goal has always been we need to match the defense. And so you need to have on the other side roughly the same amount of defense. The main problem right now is some of these models are closed source, so you need to apply for access. And so you don't really have time when you're under attack to go and basically apply for a bit of access.

24:41So for us, we were fortunate that we know and we use regularly open source models that you can freely download. So we had a lot of defense. That's something that more and more companies will need to have as part of their regular cybersecurity toolbox. And what is your experience of how well defended many companies, many public institutions actually are from this new breed of cyber attack?