Independent Investigation Agency Finds Alleged School in Iran Attacked by US
JAKARTA - The international independent investigative body Bellingcat said the newly released video "appears to contradict" US President Donald Trump's claim that Iran was responsible for the explosion at a school in Iran that killed more than 165 people at the start of the war raging in the Middle East.
This comes as more evidence emerges that the US was at fault for the February 28 attack, which hit a school adjacent to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base in Minab, Iran, in the country's southern Hormozgan Province.
Experts interviewed by the Associated Press, citing satellite image analysis, said the school was most likely hit amid a barrage of bombs dropped on the compound, Al Arabiya reported from the AP (10/3).
The video shared by Bellingcat is a three-second clip from a video taken on the day the school was hit and circulated on Sunday by Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency. The video shows ammunition falling on a building, sending a dark cloud of smoke into the air mixed with smoke likely from a previous attack on the complex.
Trevor Ball, a researcher at Bellingcat, traced the location of the video to a site near the school, something the AP also did. Ball identified the ammunition as a Tomahawk cruise missile - which only the US is known to possess in this war. This is the first evidence of the ammunition used in the attack.
Complicating the assessment of this incident is the lack of images of bomb fragments from the explosion. No independent agency reached the location during the war to conduct an investigation.
As previously reported, Iranian officials said the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls' Primary School in the Iranian city of Minab was hit during the United States and Israel's attack on the Land of the Mullahs on February 28, quoted by Anadolu.
Iranian officials said 168 people were killed and at least 95 wounded in the attack, which was blamed on the United States and Israel.
Governor Minab Mohammad Radmehr said the attack hit the school directly as classes were underway, killing girls aged between 7 and 12. The building was largely destroyed, and part of its concrete roof collapsed on the classroom.
Several factors are mentioned to indicate the US attack. One of them is the start of the assessment of the incident by the US military. According to the Pentagon's instructions on the process of mitigating civilian casualties, the assessment was launched after a group of investigators made an initial determination that the US military may be responsible. A US official told AP that the attack was most likely carried out by the US. The official spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly on this sensitive issue.
Another factor is the location of the school - next to a base of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and close to a naval unit barracks. The US military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged attacks in the province, including one around the school.
Israel, which has denied carrying out the attack, has focused on Iranian territory closer to Israel and has not reported any attacks south of Isfahan, which is 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.
The US is known to operate warships in the Arabian Sea, including the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier, which has an attack range up to the school.
Neither US Central Command nor the Israeli military immediately responded to AP's request for comment on Monday about Bellingcat's analysis.
When asked by a reporter on Saturday whether the US was responsible for the blast, which killed mostly children, President Trump replied, without providing evidence: "No, in my opinion, based on what I've seen, it was carried out by Iran."
President Trump added that Iran was "very inaccurate" with their ammunition.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States was investigating the incident.
Separately, the UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk called on the US to act quickly to address the incident, urging an impartial and transparent investigation.