Investigation further suggests it was the US that struck an Iranian school, killing 165

JERUSALEM: The investigative group Bellingcat says a newly released video “appears to contradict” United States President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible for an explosion at an Iranian school that killed over 165 people at the start of the war raging in the Mideast.

It comes as mounting evidence points to US culpability for the Feb 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 was likely struck amid a quick succession of bombs dropped on the compound.

The video shared by Bellingcat is a three-second clip of a video taken the day the school was struck and circulated on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency.

It shows a munition falling on a building, sending a dark plume into the air that mingles with smoke that likely came from earlier strikes on the compound.

Trevor Ball, a Bellingcat researcher, geolocated the video to a site near the school, something also done by the AP.

Ball identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile, which only the US is known to possess in this war. It is the first evidence of a munition used in the strike.

Complicating any assessment of the incident is the lack of images of bomb fragments from the blast. No independent agency has reached the site during the war to investigate.