A preliminary military investigation found the U.S. is responsible for the deadly bombing of an Iranian elementary school, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
A Tomahawk cruise missile killed at least 175 people, including children, on Feb. 28 when it hit the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school. The bombing was reportedly the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base, sources familiar with the report’s contents told The New York Times.
Officers at the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data given to them by the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the Times. The “target coding” labeled the school building as a military target when it was passed to CENTCOM.
Investigators remain unsure how the error was made, given that many officers across several agencies would have been responsible for verifying the information they received from the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the Times. As of Wednesday, officials were looking into whether artificial intelligence models, data crunching programs or anything else were responsible for the bombing, though they suspected a human error caused it.
The U.S. is also the only country involved in the Iranian conflict to use Tomahawk missiles.
Satellite imagery found that the school was damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on the naval base, according to The Times. The base was hit again about two hours later.
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he believed Iran struck the school, while Secretary of War Pete Hegseth added that the incident was still under investigation. Trump told reporters Monday that he would accept the investigation’s results even if the U.S. was deemed responsible.
“In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump said on Air Force One. “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”
A reporter asked Trump to respond to the new findings Wednesday as he left the White House for Ohio and Kentucky, saying he didn’t “know about that.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Tuesday briefing that Trump would accept the results, but that the incident was still under investigation.
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