The US military has been accused of killing a young family with a huge 907kg bomb during renewed strikes on Iran’s fortress Qeshm Island last week, according to a new analysis, raising more questions about its conduct in the five month conflict.
A mother, a father and their two-year-old son were reportedly killed as American forces dropped a Mark 84 bomb and hit a populated neighbourhood on Thursday, leaving a 30ft wide crater in the ground, according to evidence reviewed by the New York Times.
The newspaper said that the couple’s other two children were pulled from the rubble alive after a review of photographs, video footage and satellite imagery by weapons experts.
Analysis suggests the location and timing of the strikes, destroying several structures in the Chah-Tangu neighbourhood, was consistent with where the US military was operating at the time.
A US official told the Jerusalem Post that the scale of the US strikes on Iran that night was “about twice the size of the previous night”, and that the strikes were “wide, extensive, and impactful”.
US Central Command (Centcom) spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins said: “We are aware of the reports and looking into them. The US military never targets civilians.”
The New York Times said that it found no evidence of a military site near the family’s home, and asked why the United States was using such a large bomb - one the largest in the US military’s arsenal - to strike a densely populated area housing civilians.
Nearly two dozen homes in the area were “displaced” by the strike, the newspaper reported, citing Iranian officials. Further strikes also destroyed warehouses outside of the city, they said.
Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician and an analyst at Armament Research Services, told the newspaper: “The large crater and structure damage is consistent with a Mark-84 2,000-pound bomb, which can be equipped with JDAM guidance kits.”
Frederic Gras, a French munitions consultant, corroborated Mr Ball’s analysis of the same imagery.
He said that the bomb appeared to have detonated below the surface,
The US military has faced intense scrutiny over a fatal strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran on the first day of the war. Reuters reported on 5 March that an initial, internal military investigation showed US forces were likely responsible for the fatal strike in Minab on the opening day of the war with Iran.
The strike killed more than 175 children and teachers, Iranian officials say. The lawmakers' letter notes that would make it the U.S. military's largest civilian casualty incident since 1991, when it mistakenly bombed a shelter in Iraq, killing more than 400 civilians.
Archived copies of the Iranian school's official website show the school is adjacent to a compound operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the military force that reports to Iran's supreme leader.
Iranian officials have pointed to the strike on the school as a US war crime. The US has said it never intentionally targets civilians.
Democratic senators led by Kirsten Gillibrand have since been pushing for the Trump administration to disclose the findings from the full military investigation.
