As the Pentagon stays quiet, AP reconstructs a US strike that killed over 100 Iranian children

[spanone]

JERUSALEM (AP) — It was the deadliest reported strike in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Most of the victims were children.

In almost any other conflict, these haunting truths would be seared into national memory. Yet more than 120 days since at least one U.S. missile struck an Iranian primary school, there remains no final accounting of what happened.

The Trump administration has yet to directly accept the blame or formally release findings of a Pentagon investigation into the bombing, even though the military possessed evidence almost immediately that the site of the school had been struck, a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss an ongoing investigation, told The Associated Press.

The AP has reconstructed the story of the attack, beginning in the schoolyard on the morning of Feb. 28, drawing from open-source information, video footage, human rights reports and interviews with researchers and civilians inside and outside Iran to reveal previously unreported details about the bombing in Minab, including the diversity of children killed.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-school-strike-baluch-trump-2a134a5c74d80db763db4c3eb6d0d847

[buzzycrumbhunger]

1. Oh, but our mass murder is so much more efficient now

Just a push of a button and the massacre is practically automatic now. There's not even any splashback to pinpoint the criminals... 😡

[walkingman]

2. War crimes are just ignored these days. We have adjusted our morality to suit our actions.

[orthoclad]

3. The meat of the article

Didn't take long to type it up. I wanted to avoid questions of "fair use" and summarized the piece, since the introductory paragraphs above used up fair use. There's a lot more detail in the AP piece.

The school was within a walled compound which also contained a Rev Guard base. The school was fenced off from the neighboring base a decade ago.
Some students were children of Guard officers, some were from a persecuted minority.
The school started sending children home when bombs hit Tehran. There were hundreds in school to start.
At 10:15 Iran closed all schools.
AP says multiple munitions struck the compound. It’s not clear if that means the whole walled enclosure. The school collapsed. Children were waiting for pickup.
AP gives gruesome details.
Onlookers raced to the scene. People arrived from more distant spots.
Body parts were taken to the local hospital. Many were unrecognizable.
AP could not conclude how many munitions hit the school. I recall reports of a “double tap”, commonly used to kill rescuers.
State media claimed a death toll of 168 after a few days.

The US knew it had made strikes in the area.
At least one intel analyst knew the building had been updated as a school seven years ago. This was not widely shared across Intels. (Gee, isn’t that why we have a fascist Homeland Security now? Coordinate all this stuff?)
Pentagon staff to minimize civilian casualties was reduced. Hegseth focuses on “lethality”. This begins to sound like part of Alice’s Restaurant, the "kill" part.
In 2022, Congress created the “Civilian Protection Center of Excellence”. HEGSETH stopped its work to update lists of protected sites like schools. It was well known the lists were out of date.

A group, Airwars, identified 157 of the dead: 123 children 13 or younger (13 or younger) and 34 adults.
Airwars estimated between 157 and 168 killed and 95 and 111 injured. These stats chill me: usually the injured far outnumber the dead. This was a really LETHAL assault. You hear that, Hegseth, you and your "lethalitymaxxing"?

Bear in mind that the US launched a sneak attack on a country we were simultaneously negotiating with. Sneak attack. While negotiating. This is what comes of running a country like how capitalism works. Or like having a divine emperor 80 some years ago.

This is what we have become for the USA's 250th. I hate to say "America" because a lot of other countries with that tag don't want to be associated with the utter scum we have become.