Senior Trump administration officials have said they are still investigating whether it was a US air strike that hit a girls elementary school in Iran on the opening day of the war.
The strike was one of the deadliest attacks of the American-Israeli campaign against Iran so far, killing at least 175 people, most of whom were probably children, according to Iranian state media and health officials.
It is not clear why the school was hit, or which country’s forces fired at it.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, was asked at a briefing on Wednesday afternoon whether the US had conducted the air strike on the school. “Not that we know of,” she responded. “The department of war is investigating this matter.”
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Asked again several minutes later if there was any evidence that it was not a US strike or, conversely, if there had been any assessment as to whether Israel had played a role in the attack, she said: “Again, the department of war is currently investigating this matter.”
During his press briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday, defence secretary Pete Hegseth also was asked about the strike.
“All I can say is that we’re investigating that,” Hegseth said. “We of course never target civilian targets, but we’re taking a look and investigating that.”
The strike occurred on Saturday, the first day of the war. Hegseth was asked if there was any clarity on who was responsible, given that several days had passed since the attack. “We’re investigating it,” he repeated.
The school that was hit was called Shajarah Tayyebeh. It was in a small town in the south called Minab. Thousands of mourners filled the town’s streets Tuesday for funerals. According to video footage verified by The New York Times, rows of graves were dug by workers at a nearby cemetery, about 8km from the elementary school.
Unesco, in a statement on social media, said “the killing of pupils” at the school constituted a “grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law”.
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When Leavitt was asked about the attack at the briefing on Wednesday afternoon, she said “the United States of America does not target civilians, unlike the rogue Iranian regime that targets civilians, that kills children, that has killed thousands of their own people in the past several weeks”.
She said the Iranian regime “uses propaganda quite effectively” and that many of the reporters in the White House briefing room “have fallen for that propaganda”.
“So I would caution you from pointing a finger at the United States of America when it comes to targeting civilians,” she added, “because that’s not something that these armed forces do.” – This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
