Iran school explosion independent investigation points to U.S. strikes

An investigative group says newly released video “appears to contradict” U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible for an explosion at an Iranian school.

The investigative group Bellingcat says newly released video “appears to contradict” U.S. 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 U.S. 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 Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency. The video 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 U.S. is known to possess in this war. It’s the first evidence of a munition used in the strike.

U.S. Central Command has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles in this war and even released a photo of the USS Spruance, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group located within range of the school, firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28.

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.

When asked by a reporter Saturday whether the U.S. was responsible for the blast, which killed mostly children, Trump responded, without providing evidence: “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” Trump added that Iran is “very inaccurate” with their munitions. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly chimed in to say the U.S. was investigating.

Janina Dill, an expert on international law at Oxford University, wrote on X that even if the strike was a misidentification — and the attacker believed that the school had been a part of the neighboring IRGC base — it would still be “a very serious violation of international law.”