According to Iranian officials, the attack killed 175 people, most of them children.
The NYT, citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the probe, reported that officers at U.S. Central Command generated target coordinates using outdated information from the Defense Intelligence Agency.
“The Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part, the preliminary investigation found,” the report said.
The newspaper said President Donald Trump’s public assertions that Iran was responsible for the attack have complicated the inquiry and concerned some officials who reviewed the preliminary findings.
Trump previously suggested the Tehran regime bombed the school using one of the U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles the U.S. president claimed Iran has. The latter assertion is particularly unbelievable, given that Tomahawk sales are tightly controlled, with only a handful of closest U.S. allies allowed to purchase and deploy the cruise missiles.
The NYT’s investigation, including analysis of satellite
imagery, social-media posts and verified video, found that the school building
had been separated from the military base between 2013 and 2016: guard towers
were removed, three public entrances were added, playground markings were
painted on pavement, and walls were repainted. The Times concluded the school
was seriously damaged by a precision strike that occurred about the same time
as attacks on the naval base; the base was struck again roughly two hours
later.
The newspaper said the Tomahawk strike, carried out using the outdated coordinates, “has not surprised current and former officials” familiar with targeting problems. It noted that when Defense Intelligence Agency data are stale, analysts are expected to refresh and verify targets with imagery or other information from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
“Many officers would have been responsible for verifying that the data is correct, and officers at Central Command are responsible for checking the information they receive from the Defense Intelligence Agency or another intelligence agency,” the newspaper wrote.
“But in a fast-moving situation, like the opening days of a
war, information is sometimes not verified.”