Beginning on March 3, 2026, an image spread on social media claiming to show Iranian civilians mourning schoolchildren and other victims from a girls' primary school in the city of Minab killed by airstrikes on Feb. 28 as the U.S. and Israel launched a large-scale military offensive on Iran.
The image was widely shared across social media, with comments and captions criticizing the U.S. for attacking Iran — and for reportedly killing civilians while doing so.
Snopes readers wrote in to ask whether the image of mourners was legitimate. While other images of Iranians mourning the victims do exist, we found conclusive evidence that this particular image was generated by an artificial intelligence tool. Therefore, we've rated this claim a fake.
First, there was the evidence within the photo itself. The photos of some of the schoolchildren looked warped and somewhat inhuman, while the hands of some mourners in the background were also jumbled, hallmarks of images generated with AI.
We also ran the photo through two AI detection tools, Undetectable and WasItAI. Such tools are not perfect and should not be the only source of evidence to determine whether an image is AI-generated, but they do provide good supporting evidence. Both Undetectable and WasItAI's models found high likelihoods the image of mourners was AI-generated.
Separately, we fed the image into Google Gemini to determine whether it was created with Google's AI software. All images generated with Gemini contain a hidden watermark called a SynthID that can be used to later identify them. Gemini found no SynthID in the image, meaning the image was not generated by Google's tools.
Finally, we investigated the origin of the post. The earliest example we could find was posted to X by Harmeet Singh, whose bio claims he is Pakistan's first Sikh journalist and anchor. In a follow-up post, Singh himself said the image was AI-generated and that he had shared it "symbolically to reflect the scale of the tragedy."
https://x.com/HarmeetSinghPk/status/2028812082368614835
Snopes reached out to Singh to confirm he had generated and originally shared the image, but had not heard back at the time of publication. We will update this report if we do.
Regardless, this was more than sufficient evidence to conclude the image of mourners was AI-generated.
Snopes has also covered unsubstantiated rumors that that the strike on the girls' school was the result of a misfired Iranian missile and determined that an aerial image of graves for the victims was real.