Investigative group Bellingcat said a newly released video “contradicts” US President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible for an explosion at an Iranian school that killed more than 165 people at the start of the ongoing war in the Middle East.
It is mounting evidence of US culpability for the February 28 strike, which hit a school adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard base in Minab, Iran, in the country’s southern Hormozgan province. Experts interviewed by The Associated Press, citing satellite image analysis, say the school may have been hit amid a rapid succession of bombs falling on the compound.
The video shared by Bellingcat is a three-second clip taken on the day of the school strike and broadcast on Sunday by Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency. The video shows a munition falling on a building, sending a dark plume into the air mixing with smoke that may have come from earlier strikes on the compound. Bellingcat researcher Trevor Ball geolocated the video to a site near the school, as did the AP.
Ball identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile – the only one the US is known to have in this war. This is the first evidence of the ammunition used in the strike.
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US Central Command has acknowledged the use of Tomahawk missiles in the battle and has also released a photo of the USS Spruce, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group, which is within range of the school, firing a Tomahawk missile on February 28.
Complicating any assessment of the incident is the lack of images of the detonated bomb fragments. No independent agency has reached the site during the war to investigate.
Asked by reporters on Saturday whether the US was responsible for the explosion that killed most of the children, Trump responded without providing evidence: “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, it was Iran.” Trump said Iran was “very inaccurate” with their weapons. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly said the US was investigating.
Janina Dill, an expert on international law at the University of Oxford, wrote in X that even if the strike was misidentified — and the attackers believed the school was part of a neighboring IRGC base — it was still “a very serious violation of international law.”
“Attackers have an obligation to do everything possible to verify the status of the target object,” he wrote.
Several factors point to a US strike.
One is to initiate an assessment of the incident by the US military. According to the Pentagon’s instructions on civilian harm mitigation procedures, an assessment will begin after a team of investigators makes an initial determination that the US military may be at fault.
A U.S. official told the AP that a strike is likely. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter.
Another school site – adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard base and close to barracks for a naval unit. The US military is focused on naval targets and has agreed to strikes in the province, including the area around the school. Israel, which denied carrying out the strike, focused on areas of Iran close to Israel and reported no strikes south of Isfahan, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.
Neither the U.S. military’s Central Command nor the Israeli military immediately responded to requests for comment Monday from the AP about Bellingcat’s analysis.
Speaking about the US operation at a press conference on March 2, Hegseth said: “America is unleashing the deadliest and most precise air power campaign in history on the so-called international organizations.”
“There are no stupid rules of engagement,” he said.
“There are no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don’t waste time or lives.”
© 2026 The Canadian Press
(tags to translate)Iran
