Video suggests US missile hit Iranian grade school

What happened

Video released Sunday adds to the evidence that a U.S. missile hit an Iranian elementary school for girls in the first wave of attacks. Iran said at least 175 people, including more than 160 children, were killed in the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyiba Primary School, located next to an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps naval base in the southern city of Minab.

Who said what

The video, published by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified as authentic by The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, shows a Tomahawk missile hitting near the school. “The U.S. military is the only force involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles,” the Times said. The attack was “widely believed to be the deadliest for civilians in the weeklong conflict,” the Post said.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday he did not believe the U.S. was responsible. “In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” he told reporters, per the Times. The video “appears to contradict” Trump, said investigative group Bellingcat. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon was “certainly investigating, but the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”

What next?

Even before the new video, experts had “deduced from satellite image analysis that the school was likely struck during a quick succession of bombs dropped on an adjacent IRGC base,” The Associated Press said. Human Rights Watch said Saturday that the strike should be investigated as a war crime. The “prompt and thorough investigation” should include “if those responsible should have known that a school was there and that it would be full of children and their teachers before midday,” said Human Rights Watch’s Sophia Jones.