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The U.S. hit a school and sports hall in Lamerd, Iran, on the first day of its war on the country, using a new, untested weapon made by Lockheed Martin that unleashes an explosive barrage of metal pellets on its target, new reporting finds.
The U.S. strike on February 28 hit a building where dozens of young girls were doing their regular sports training, as well as an adjacent elementary school; Iran’s UN representative, Amir Seaid Iravani, said there was a girls’ volleyball team using the sports hall at the time. It killed at least 21 civilians, including children, reports say, on the same day that the U.S. struck an elementary school in Minab, killing 175 people, mostly children.
According to analyses by The New York Times and BBC, the Lamerd strike was carried out using a Precision Strike Missile, also known as a PrSM. A U.S. official also confirmed that the PrSM was used in the attack. The PrSM is a new missile that only cleared testing last July. It was first used in combat in Iran, the U.S. military has bragged. Lockheed Martin touted the acceleration of the production of the missile in a post on social media last week.
The PrSM detonates just before contact with its target, exploding into a huge number of tungsten pellets that are sprayed outward. Video of the strike shows the missile exploding just above the hall and school, and images of the aftermath show an array of pockmarks in the school, playground, and yard around the area.
The PrSM has a range of 400 miles and is fired from land, meaning that it was fired from within a Gulf state, despite many Gulf states distancing themselves from direct involvement with the war. “US Central Command has admitted to using PrSM in strikes from the desert of an unnamed Gulf country against Iran in the early phases of the conflict,” an expert for intelligence firm McKenzie Intelligence told BBC.
The Times reports that the fact that it’s untested in combat raises questions about whether or not the missile’s targeting worked correctly or if it was defective, leading the military to strike the school. The sports hall and school are adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps compound, but clearly walled off and identified in many places online as a school.
However, the circumstances surrounding the Minab massacre were similar, and reports have found that it was done using a Tomahawk missile — a staple of the U.S.’s weapons arsenal for decades. In that attack, the U.S. also reportedly carried out a “triple-tap” strike, meaning that the military struck the school three times in a row, to eliminate survivors.
Hossein Gholami, an elementary school teacher and father to one of the 16-year-old victims, Zahra, told Drop Site of the harrowing attack: “The screaming was rising from a distance. A colleague ran toward me, waving his arm, and said in a shaken voice: ‘Zahra, the hall, there has been an explosion.’ I felt as though the ground had split beneath my feet.”
The aftermath of the attack was horrific, he said: “The smell of blood and burns covered everything … the survivors were injured with fractures and burns from the shrapnel.”
Gholami’s daughter was killed in the blast. “Every time I close my eyes I see her face, her smile, and I hear the sound of the explosion.”
One of those killed by the U.S. strike was just 2 years old, BBC reported. Another child who was killed was 12-year-old Elham Zeri, a fifth grader and avid volleyball player, her father said. Fourth grader Helma Ahmadizadeh, 10, was also among those killed, an Iranian journalist wrote.
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