International Desk, Mar 9 (EFE).- Analysis of a video by several US experts suggests that a US missile strike may have hit an Iranian girls’ school in the southern city of Minab, killing about 180 people, most of them children, on the first day of the war against Iran.
The video, published Sunday by Iran’s Mehr news agency and verified by US media outlets, shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking an Iranian naval base next to the school on Feb. 28, when Washington and Tel Aviv launched coordinated attacks against Iran.
The US military is the only force involved in the conflict known to use Tomahawk missiles, The New York Times reported Monday. The newspaper and The Washington Post consulted weapons experts to verify the footage, which was also geolocated by investigative journalists at Bellingcat.
The images do not show a missile directly hitting the school, Shajarah Tayyebeh. However, they show a column of smoke rising from the school building, which stands near a base of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
A previous New York Times investigation based on satellite imagery, social media posts and other verified videos concluded that the school was struck by a precision attack carried out at the same time as the strikes on the naval base.
Satellite images analyzed by the newspaper show that the school building was once part of the military base complex. By September 2016, however, the school grounds had been separated from the naval installation by a wall.
The Pentagon said it is investigating the strike. Experts from the United Nations and the Human Rights Watch have described the attack as a possible war crime, while the Iranian government called it a “barbaric act.”
US President Donald Trump has blamed Iran for the incident, saying Iranian forces are “very imprecise” in their attacks.
The analysis concluded that the Tomahawk missile visible in the footage struck a building described as a medical clinic inside the naval base.
When the camera pans to the right, large plumes of dust and smoke rise from around the primary school, suggesting it was hit shortly before the strike on the base.
Iran says the war has killed over 1,300 civilians. Israel and the US have reported 10 and seven fatalities, respectively, while Lebanon says Israeli strikes have killed 400 people. EFE
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