Military Madness > Scores of kids killed in Iran school, apparently by American Tomahawk missile

 

Iran school explosion independent investigation points to U.S. strikes

By Julia Frankel and Aamer Madhani  The Associated Press

Posted March 9, 2026 9:40 am

 3 min read

The investigative group Bellingcat says newly released video “appears to contradict” U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible for an explosion at an Iranian school that killed over 165 people at the start of the war raging in the Mideast.

It comes as mounting evidence points to U.S. culpability for the Feb. 28 strike, which hit a school adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard base in Minab, Iran, in the country’s southern Hormozgan Province. Experts interviewed by The Associated Press, citing satellite image analysis, say the school was likely struck amid a quick succession of bombs dropped on the compound.

The video shared by Bellingcat is a three-second clip of a video taken the day the school was struck and circulated Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency. The video shows a munition falling on a building, sending a dark plume into the air that mingles with smoke that likely came from earlier strikes on the compound. Trevor Ball, a Bellingcat researcher, geolocated the video to a site near the school, something also done by the AP.

2:22

Iran asks U.S. ‘what threat did our school children pose?’ after deadly Minab strike

Ball identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile — which only the U.S. is known to possess in this war. It’s the first evidence of a munition used in the strike.

U.S. Central Command has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles in this war and even released a photo of the USS Spruance, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group located within range of the school, firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28.

Complicating any assessment of the incident is the lack of images of bomb fragments from the blast. No independent agency has reached the site during the war to investigate.

When asked by a reporter Saturday whether the U.S. was responsible for the blast, which killed mostly children, Trump responded, without providing evidence: “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” Trump added that Iran is “very inaccurate” with their munitions. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly chimed in to say the U.S. was investigating.

Janina Dill, an expert on international law at Oxford University, wrote on X that even if the strike was a misidentification — and the attacker believed that the school had been a part of the neighboring IRGC base — it would still be “a very serious violation of international law.”

“Attackers are under an obligation to do everything feasible to verify the status of targeted object,” she wrote.

3:40

Iran names its new supreme leader as attacks grow on all front

Several factors point to a U.S. strike.

One is the launching of an assessment of the incident by the U.S. military. According to the Pentagon’s instructions on processes for mitigating civilian harm, an assessment is launched after a group of investigators make an initial determination that the U.S. military may bear culpability.

A U.S. official told the AP that the strike was likely U.S. The official spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter.

Another is the location of the school — next to the Revolutionary Guard base and close to barracks for a naval unit. The U.S. military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged strikes in the province, including one in the vicinity of the school. Israel, which has denied conducting the strike, has focused on areas of Iran closer to Israel and hasn’t reported any strikes south of Isfahan, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.

Neither the U.S. military’s Central Command nor the Israeli military immediately replied to requests for comment Monday from the AP on Bellingcat’s analysis.

Speaking about the U.S. operation at a press conference March 2, Hegseth said: “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.”

“No stupid rules of engagement,” he said.

“No politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”

Military Madness > The Horrors committed by Ukrainian troops in Kursk, murder, rape, torture

 

Ukrainian troops massacred, tortured and raped civilians in Russian village – captured soldier (GRAPHIC)

Kiev sent his unit to “cleanse” a small Kursk Region settlement, one of the perpetrators has admitted

©  The Russian Investigative Committee

A Ukrainian military unit raped and killed eight women and brutally murdered at least 14 other civilians in the village of Russkoye Porechnoye, a captured Ukrainian soldier has admitted during interrogation by Russian investigators.

Russkoye Porechnoye, a small settlement of around 300 residents, fell under Kiev’s control in August last year during a Western-backed incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region. Russian forces liberated the settlement earlier this month, where they discovered decomposing corpses of civilians stashed in basements throughout the village.

On Friday, the Russian Investigative Committee released new evidence on the massacre, including footage of the interrogation of Yevgeny Fabrisenko, a soldier with the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade. Fabrisenko stated that he was deployed to the village on September 28 alongside his immediate commander and two other soldiers.

According to Fabrisenko, their company commander explicitly ordered them to “cleanse” the village of Russian civilians. The unit remained in Russkoye Porechnoye until October 3, during which they raided homes, raped women, and executed men on sight. Those who resisted were tortured and killed, he admitted.

©  The Russian Investigative Committee

In several gruesome videos released by the investigators on Friday, Russian troops can be seen inspecting the village and trying to count the heavily-decomposed and mutilated bodies they found in multiple cellars.

©  The Russian Investigative Committee

Fabrisenko described how he and his comrades raped eight women before forcing them to their knees and shooting them in the back of the head.

©  The Russian Investigative Committee

The villagers were unable to escape, as the outskirts of the settlement were under the fire control of Ukrainian troops, who shot at anyone attempting to flee, Fabrisenko explained.

In total, the unit killed nearly two dozen civilians, including eight women, eleven men, and three elderly women, he said. Most victims were shot, while six were forced into a basement and killed with a hand grenade by the team’s leader.

READ MORE: Russian diplomat accuses Kiev of genocide

Fabrisenko was captured by Russian forces in late November after he got lost while relocating between positions and accidentally ran into a Russian reconnaissance unit.

The Ukrainian serviceman has fully confessed to his crimes and now faces a life sentence on multiple charges, including terrorism and rape.

Moscow has strongly condemned the massacre in Russkoye Porechnoye, with senior officials suggesting the killings could constitute genocide. Earlier this month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the incident further confirmed the “terrorist and neo-Nazi essence of the Kiev regime.”

And this is another similarity between Ukraine and Hamas as it is reminiscent of the Hamas massacre of Oct 7th. Evil is evil!

Russkoye Porechnoye

Nearly 50 children repatriated between Russia and Ukraine

 

Russia, Ukraine to exchange displaced children

in Qatar-brokered deal

Russia and Ukraine have agreed in a Qatari-brokered deal to exchange almost 50 children displaced by Moscow's invasion, the Kremlin's children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova announced in Doha Wednesday. 

Issued on: 24/04/2024 - 17:40Modified: 24/04/2024 - 21:14

1 min

By:FRANCE 24Follow|FRANCE 24

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that 16 Ukrainian children previously "deported to Russia" had been reunited with their families.

"A group of 16 Ukrainian children ... have been released and reunited with their families" in Qatar, Zelensky said, not addressing Russia's claim that 48 children were involved in an exchange, including 19 that would go to Russia.

Moscow has been accused of forcibly taking Ukrainian children into Russian territory during its full-scale offensive, with Lvova-Belova wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges related to those allegations.

"For the first time in a face-to-face format, we held talks with the Ukrainian side. Twenty-nine children are due to go to Ukraine and 19 to Russia," Lvova-Belova announced.

She gave no details on why the children were in Russian hands or where they had come from.

Ukraine believes Russia has illegally taken more than 19,000 of its children since the start of the 2022 invasion, of which fewer than 400 have been returned.

Moscow denies that charge, saying that it has transferred children for their safety away from fighting zones.

The fate of the children has been highly sensitive in Ukraine since the war began two years ago. Some of the children's parents were killed, while others were separated from carers by the fast-moving front lines at the start of the invasion.

Some were living in Ukrainian orphanages in areas Russia then occupied.

Ukraine says Moscow's forces illegally deported them to Russia, and accuses the Russian authorities of trying to wipe out their Ukrainian identity.

Teenagers that returned to Ukraine have said they were subjected to Russian patriotic education and made to praise the Russian army.  

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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Military Madness > British troops in Afghanistan for 8 years - 64 child casualties, or, perhaps twice that

..

Dozens of Afghan children died during British military action

By Clyde Hughes

A U.S. Marine assigned to Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force shows his video camera to children awaiting evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 22, 2021. A new report said at least 64 children died during British operations in Afghanistan. File Photo by Gunnery Sgt. Melissa Marnell/USMC/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 9 (UPI) -- A London-based war-violence research watchdog said in a new study Wednesday that dozens of Afghan children were killed during military actions by British forces, and the government paid out an average of $1,884 for each death.

The nonprofit Action on Armed Violence said it has confirmed that 64 Afghan children died in action involving the British military from 2006-2014, some four times higher than previously thought. The organization said the actual number of deaths could be as high as 135.

The British Ministry of Defense previously said 16 Afghan children died following British military action.

The organization, which analyzed compensation payments to Afghan families, said records beyond the 64 confirmed child deaths were not clear. Information in those reports mentioned terms such as "son," "daughter" or "nephew," without confirmation of ages.

"Of course, it is possible to be an adult son, daughter or nephew but Afghanistan has a young population, the median age is 18, so the likelihood of someone's child being a minor is high," the report said. "Even if just half of these additional victims were under 18, that would bring the number of children killed by British forces to 100."

The report went on to say it found no evidence of British forces specifically targeting children in the incidents."

Did they find any evidence that they deliberately avoided targeting children?

A report last year from Action on Armed Violence said Britain paid out $944,348.80 in compensation for almost 300 civilian deaths during the Afghanistan conflict. At the time, that included 86 children and 203 adult civilians.

Only 10 y/o: Yemen Sees Spike in Parents Marrying Off Young Daughters for Cash

 40,000 girls are coerced into becoming child brides every single day - 7600 of which are under the age of 15.

10 y/o Mlak can't go to school or play outside

for fear of being kidnapped and sold by her father

Extremely young girls are paying the price for Yemen's brutal civil war, being married off by their own families, which are struggling to make ends meet. RT spoke to a mother who managed to save her 10-year-old daughter from becoming a child bride.

A woman by the name of Nasrine told RT that her 10-year-old daughter Mlak has already been engaged to an elderly man, a deal which was apparently arranged by the girl’s father against the Nasrine’s will. The mother and daughter were able to receive help from the Yemen Women’s Union, and the deal did not go through.

However, Nasrine says she is still worried for her daughter, fearing the father will one day kidnap her in another attempt to sell her as a child bride.

“I'm totally against the idea of her marrying so young. It doesn't matter who the man is, she's just a child and should go to school. She's only 10, she wouldn't survive marriage,” Nasrine told RT.

“I don't know what will happen to us, but my only goal is my daughter's education. She hasn't been going to school for two years, because I'm afraid that one day her father will kidnap her and marry her off. Because of that, she has lost the chance to play and learn,” she continued.

Early marriage has become “alarmingly widespread” in war-struck Yemen, UNICEF said in March, as cited by AP. 

The organization conducted a survey in six provinces in September. Some 72 percent of women said they were married by the time they were 18, and 44 percent were married by age 15. Before the war, similar surveys 50 percent would say they were married before 18, UNICEF says.

Hayat al-Kinai, an activist from the Yemen Women's Union who helped Nasrine and Mlak, told RT that the country is now seeing “many stories on early marriage.”

She said that even if mothers do not want to marry their daughters, they feel they are left with little choice.

“The poverty is very, very high, and so they accept to marry their daughters,” she said.

Nasrine, mother of 10-year-old Mlak, saved from being married off for money, speaks to RT. / RT

Meanwhile, UNICEF regional director Geert Cappelaere told RT that the problems that exist in Yemen “do not have to be there.”

“These problems are of human making, and the main issue is that Yemen is at war, and so the simple way of stopping all of this is stopping the conflict, is investing back in a country that requires development, investing in the education of children, investing in the health of the children,” he said.

“What is today invested in fighting each other needs to be invested into the most vulnerable Yemenis, the boys and girls of Yemen.”

However, the war in Yemen shows no signs of stopping, with the Saudi-led coalition's campaign in its third year.

The Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US, launched an aerial campaign against Shiite Houthi rebels in March 2015, and later launched a ground operation. The coalition is allied to Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia when the Houthis took power in Yemen.

A senior UN official estimated in January that the death toll in Yemen's conflict had exceeded 10,000 people, including 4,000 civilians. Some 17 million people in the war-torn country are also at imminent risk of famine, according to UN estimates. 

The coalition has long been accused of civilian casualties, with a September report by the Yemen Data Project concluding that one-third of Saudi airstrikes hit hospitals, schools, and other civilian targets. Those figures were denounced as “vastly exaggerated” by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who spoke to the Guardian.

Saudi Arabia has denied targeting innocent Yemenis, instead accusing the Houthis of using civilian installations to conceal weapons and launch missile attacks against Riyadh with help from Iran – claims which Tehran denies.

Meanwhile, the US continues to support Saudi Arabia, with President Donald Trump striking an arms deal with Riyadh last month which totaled $350 billion. The agreement is said to be aimed at bolstering security “in the face of Iranian threats.”

Mlak is not the first face of the 'child bride' problem in Yemen; there was Rawan who died most horribly on her wedding night when she was just 8 years old.

Her tragic story is found here.

and then there is Nada. Nada escaped her parents plot to marry her off by running away with an uncle. The video she made while on the run is gripping and gut-wrenching.

Her video and story can be viewed here.

For more info on child brides please see:

The Incredible Truth about Child Brides

Why Child Brides Will Always Be with Us

Yemen consists of about 25m people of which between 25,000 and 40,000 are Christians, about 50 are Jews and the remainder are Muslim - 65% Sunni and 35% Shia. The Houthis who swept into power in Sana'a in Sept 2014 are Shia and are, apparently, backed by Iran. The Saudis support Sunni forces including the ousted president Abd Rubbah Mansur Hadi.