The investigative group Bellingcat says newly released video “appears to contradict” U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was accountable for an explosion at an Iranian school that killed over 165 people in the beginning of the war raging within the Mideast.
It comes as mounting evidence points to U.S. culpability for the Feb. 28 strike, which hit a college adjoining to a Revolutionary Guard base in Minab, Iran, within the country’s southern Hormozgan Province. Experts interviewed by The Associated Press, citing satellite image evaluation, say the college was likely struck amid a fast succession of bombs dropped on the compound.
The video shared by Bellingcat is a three-second clip of a video taken the day the college was struck and circulated Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency. The video shows a munition falling on a constructing, sending a dark plume into the air that mingles with smoke that likely got here from earlier strikes on the compound. Trevor Ball, a Bellingcat researcher, geolocated the video to a site near the college, something also done by the AP.
Ball identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile — which only the U.S. is understood to own on this war. It’s the primary evidence of a munition utilized in the strike.
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U.S. Central Command has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles on this war and even released a photograph of the united statesSpruance, a part of the united statesAbraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group positioned inside range of the college, firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28.
Complicating any assessment of the incident is the dearth of images of bomb fragments from the blast. No independent agency has reached the positioning in the course of the war to research.
When asked by a reporter Saturday whether the U.S. was accountable for the blast, which killed mostly children, Trump responded, without providing evidence: “No, in my view, 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 authority on international law at Oxford University, wrote on X that even when the strike was a misidentification — and the attacker believed that the college had been an element of the neighboring IRGC base — it could still be “a really serious violation of international law.”
“Attackers are under an obligation to do every little thing feasible to confirm the status of targeted object,” she wrote.
Several aspects point to a U.S. strike.
One is the launching of an assessment of the incident by the U.S. military. In accordance with the Pentagon’s instructions on processes for mitigating civilian harm, an assessment is launched after a bunch of investigators make an initial determination that the U.S. military may bear culpability.
A U.S. official told the AP that the strike was likely U.S. The official spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter.
One other is the situation of the college — next to the Revolutionary Guard base and shut to barracks for a naval unit. The U.S. military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged strikes within the province, including one within the vicinity of the college. Israel, which has denied conducting the strike, has focused on areas of Iran closer to Israel and hasn’t reported any strikes south of Isfahan, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.
Neither the U.S. military’s Central Command nor the Israeli military immediately replied to requests for comment Monday from the AP on Bellingcat’s evaluation.
Speaking concerning the U.S. operation at a press conference March 2, Hegseth said: “America, no matter what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing essentially the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.”
“No silly rules of engagement,” he said.
“No politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”
© 2026 The Canadian Press