Military weapons specialists say a deadly blast at an Iranian wedding this week almost certainly was due to a direct US hit. Four experts who examined photos and video for Reuters concluded that the damage in the southern town of Kuhestak matches a direct strike on the house’s roof, likely from a 500-pound air-dropped US weapon, not shrapnel from another target or an errant Iranian air-defense missile. The Tuesday attack killed four people, including a 4-year-old boy, and injured at least 68 during a wedding gathering about 450 feet from a telecommunications tower the US acknowledges striking that night.
The AP reports that the celebrations were for the nuptials of a local fisherman’s daughter. “Blocks were falling and hitting people’s heads,” one wedding guest recalls in a video from Iran’s Red Crescent humanitarian group. “And many small children and women that were there were terribly injured. So many.” “The human cost is devastating,” human rights activist Farzin Kadkhodaei tells the Guardian. “Their families are now left with unimaginable grief, while the injured have to live with the physical and emotional consequences.”
Vice President JD Vance said Washington is looking into what happened. “We’re investigating it because obviously we care. We want to know,” he noted during a Thursday presser at the White House, per Reuters. He also said he was wary of Iran’s initial reports about the incident, adding that although the US wouldn’t ever intentionally go after civilians in the war effort, “sometimes things happen,” per the Guardian. The episode follows the February destruction of an Iranian primary school in a strike that a US internal probe has already linked to American forces, notes Reuters.