Lawmakers demand Pentagon release findings from probe of Iran school strike

Democratic US senators, led by New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, call for US President Donald Trump’s administration to disclose within the next week the findings from a US military investigation into a February 28 strike at a girls’ school in Iran.

Reuters first reported on March 5 that an initial, internal US military investigation showed that US forces were likely responsible for the fatal strike in Minab, on the opening day of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

The group of more than two dozen US senators, including the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, request the US military finalize its investigation, brief Congress and present a plan to ensure that such a mistake does not happen again.

“There is no justification for withholding an unclassified accounting of what happened, what went wrong, and what the department is doing to prevent recurrence,” the letter says.

Asked for comment, a Pentagon official tells Reuters: “The investigation is ongoing. We do not have any updates to announce at this time.”

The strike killed more than 175 children and teachers, Iranian officials say. The lawmakers’ letter notes that would make it the US 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 elite military force that reports to Iran’s supreme leader.

Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, has reported that US officials responsible for creating targeting packages appeared to have used out-of-date intelligence.

Iranian officials have pointed to the strike on the school as a US war crime. The US has said it never intentionally targets civilians.

In the letter, the lawmakers ask Cooper and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit an unclassified version of the findings to Congress and the US public. They also ask for a prevention and remediation plan “that identifies the specific corrective actions the department will take to ensure this does not happen again.”