First Day of the Iran War: An Untested Missile Hit a School
On the war's first day, the United States deployed a ballistic missile that had never been used in combat; analysis of the strike sites shows it hit a sports hall, an elementary school, and residential buildings, killing at least twenty-one including children.
#civilian harm #state violence
On the first day of the war with Iran, a US ballistic missile previously unused in combat struck a sports hall, an elementary school, and residential buildings, killing at least twenty-one people including children. None of the targets were military by any conventional definition.
Forensic reconstruction — debris analysis, satellite imagery, civilian witness accounts — placed the strikes in the war’s first hours, when targeting decisions are still being calibrated against doctrine and intelligence is at its least mature. The choice to use an untested weapon in this window compounds the question of whether the targeting was deliberate, mistaken, or indifferent.
Whatever the answer, the dead are dead. The Pentagon has not, as of this writing, published a strike assessment that addresses the civilian harm.