The U.S. may be responsible for the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran that killed 168 people, many of them children, on Feb. 28, sources told CBS News.
The preliminary U.S. assessment suggests that the United States is “likely” responsible for the deadly attack but did not intentionally target the school and may have hit it in error, possibly due to the use of dated intelligence which wrongly identified the area as still part of an Iranian military installation, a person briefed on the preliminary intelligence told CBS News.
Israel’s military was also not operating in the area, two sources told CBS News.
An additional source familiar with the ongoing inquiry told CBS News that investigators believe the U.S. military may have been responsible because it was operating in the area while Israel’s military was not, though no final conclusions have been reached.
And an Israeli government source told CBS News that Israel was not behind the attack and its military was not operating near the school.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CBS News in a statement that the “investigation is ongoing”, and “There are no conclusions at this time, and it is both irresponsible and false for anyone to claim otherwise.”
CBS News has confirmed the school building was located in close proximity to two sites controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Minab, a city in the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan.
Footage filmed from a parking lot showed black smoke billowing from a damaged building adorned with murals featuring drawings of crayons, children and an apple. The CBS News Confirmed team geolocated the video to a building in Minab. Iranian media identified the building as the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school.
Iranian state media said at least 168 people, including schoolgirls ages 7 to 12, were killed in the strike which occurred last Saturday, on the first day of the war. Saturdays are regular school days in Iran.
A list published in Iranian state media from authorities in Iran’s Minab county claimed to show the names of 57 of those killed. Human Rights Watch has said at least 48 of those names appear to be children, according to their birthdates on the list, along with their school principal and teachers.
Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images
Without providing evidence, President Trump said Saturday that the U.S. believes the bombing “was done by Iran” and cited information that he had seen.
“We think it was done by Iran, because they’re very inaccurate with their munitions, they have no accuracy whatsoever, it was done by Iran,” Mr. Trump said aboard Air Force One after attending the dignified transfer of six U.S. soldiers who were killed in an Iranian strike in Kuwait on March 1.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Central Command have both said an investigation was ongoing and did not echo the president’s assertions.
Questioned about the incident in a CBS News “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, Hegseth said “unlike our adversaries, the Iranians, we never target civilians”, and “it’s being investigated, which is the only answer I’m prepared to give.”
The New York Times and Reuters were first to report that the U.S. may be behind the fatal bombing.
