US missile hit military base near Iran school, video analysis shows

A US Tomahawk missile hit a military base near a primary school in southern Iran where Iranian authorities said 168 people, including around 110 children, were killed, expert video analysis shows.

A video published yesterday by Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency, which BBC Verify has confirmed as authentic, shows a missile moments before it struck an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base next to the Shajareh Tayebeh primary school in Minab.

Experts who have seen this latest video told us the presence of a Tomahawk missile, along with evidence the area was hit with multiple strikes, indicates this was a US operation. Neither Israel nor Iran are known to possess Tomahawks, experts said.

It would also make the scenario of a single Iranian missile hitting the site at the same time and causing such a high reported death toll highly improbable, an expert told BBC Verify.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump said Iran was to blame for the strike on the school.

"We think it was done by Iran because they're very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

According to the BBC's US news partner CBS a preliminary assessment of the incident by the US suggests it was "likely" to have been responsible for the deadly attack but did not intentionally target the school and may have hit it in error.

An Israeli government source told CBS News that Israel was not behind the attack and its military was not operating near the school.

Iran has blamed the US and Israel for the attack. Neither the US nor Israel has publicly accepted or denied responsibility.

The BBC has asked the US government to comment on the experts' assessment of the new video.

BBC Verify's analysis of the video suggests a medical clinic - which Iranian media says belonged to the IRGC navy - at the base was likely hit by the Tomahawk missile seen in the footage. The clinic is approximately 200m (650ft) from the school. The footage was first analysed by online investigation group Bellingcat.

The verified video shows large smoke plumes near the school before the Tomahawk is visible, which suggests it had been hit before the missile seen in the footage detonates in the military base.

This corresponds with BBC Verify's previous analysis that the school was struck around the same time as other buildings in the adjacent IRGC complex.

Three experts identified the munition in the verified video as a US Tomahawk missile.

A senior analyst at Mackenzie Intelligence Services said the munition in the video has "all the hallmarks of a US Tomahawk in its terminal phase".

The Tomahawk is a type of long-range cruise missile that can be launched from submarines, ships and aircraft which has been in the US arsenal for decades.

Wes Bryant, a national security analyst who served in the US Air Force, also confirmed it was a Tomahawk missile.

Bryant added that the evidence for multiple strikes on the entire IRGC compound "is indicative of a deliberate and precise" US operation.

N R Jenzen Jones, director of Armament Research Services, previously told BBC Verify it was unlikely an Iranian missile had caused the significant blast damage seen at the school because they carry "relatively small explosive warheads".

The US military's most-senior officer, Gen Dan Caine, said on 2 March that Tomahawks were the first missiles to be fired at Iran by the US Navy as part of "strikes across the southern flank".

At a news conference on 4 March the US Department of Defense produced an illustrative map showing strikes carried out in the first 100 hours of the war which shows the Minab area was targeted.

An ongoing internet blackout in Iran has made it difficult to independently verify details of the incident.

Restrictions on international journalists' ability to report freely in Iran makes it very hard to be sure exactly what happened in Minab on 28 February.