by Nicole Silverio
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.
According to the Times, officers at the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data given to them by the Defense Intelligence Agency. 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.
The Pentagon told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the incident continues to be “under investigation.”
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.
According to Al Jazeera, Iran has seen over 1,300 people killed so far in the conflict. The outlet also reported almost 10,000 civilian sites have been hit.
Israel has seen at least 13 people die in the war, and 17 people in the Gulf states, Al Jazeera stated.
So far, seven American service members have died in the war with Iran, PBS News reported.
The Pentagon said that 140 American service members have also been injured in the conflict, ABC News stated.
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Nicole Silverio is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
