CAIRO (AP) — A U.S. missile hit a home in southern Iran where dozens were gathered to celebrate the wedding of a fisherman’s daughter, according to a rights group and Iranian media.
Iranian state media said four people — two women and two children — were killed and more than 60 were wounded. The rights group said one of the children, a teenager, was killed by another strike on a nearby communications tower.
Heavy explosions shook the coastal town of Kuhestak on the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, and security footage carried by Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency showed fireballs lighting up the night sky. It came amid the latest round of American bombardment in southern Iran that the U.S. military said was targeting air defenses, radar systems and maritime assets.
Kuhestak is one of a string of small towns that dot the barren coastline along the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint that has become a central front in the six-month war. Kuhestak is located about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the town of Minab, where more than 100 children were killed in a U.S. missile strike that hit a primary school on Feb. 28, the opening day of the war launched by the U.S. and Israel.
U.S. Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said the U.S. military was looking into the reports of the strike on a wedding. He would not say if the military had launched a formal investigation.
Little information has come out of the remote area. This is what we know so far.
A missile smashed into the wedding party
At least one missile hit the home of Ali Mallahi, a fisherman who at the time was celebrating the wedding of his daughter, state media said.
“The missile completely destroyed the ceiling of the house,” Mallahi said in an interview with state TV as he pointed to the hole. He said a neighboring house that shares the same yard was hit by another missile. Like most of the town's population, Mallahi belongs to Iran’s Baluch ethnic minority.
There was no immediate video footage of the moment of impact. But videos aired by Iranian media showed a crater, and walls and the roof of the building heavily damaged, with a smashed car nearby and debris — including wedding guests' shoes — scattered around.
Four people were killed and dozens wounded, according to state media
The state news agency IRNA and state TV said two women and two children, aged 4 and 16, were killed, and at least 68 were wounded. Just after the strike, Ahmad Nafisi, the province’s deputy governor, had told Iranian state television that five people were killed. There was no explanation for the change.
At the hospital in Minab where wounded people were taken, Iranian media showed at least two girls and a woman in bandages. One of the children looked like she was still in shock.
A man at the hospital with bandages on his head and arm said he was heading to the wedding when he heard jets overhead. The explosion hit as he arrived.
“Blocks were falling and hitting people’s heads. And many small children and women that were there were terribly injured. So many,” he said in a video posted by the Iranian Red Crescent, which did not identify him.
The nearby port was also targeted
Also hit in the round of strikes was a communications tower at Kuhestak’s port, about 100 meters (yards) from Mallahi’s house, according to state media.
At least two missiles hit the communications tower and another hit a pier at the port, Moein Arjomand, director of the Balochistan Human Rights Documentation Network, told the AP, citing witnesses who spoke to his group.
The group, which maintains contacts with Baluch communities in Iran, said the 16-year-old was killed by shrapnel as he rode his motorcycle near the communications tower, rather than at the wedding as reported by Iranian media.
Separately, Iran has said four members of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and 10 members of the Guard’s volunteer Basij forces were killed in the latest round of U.S. attacks. A total of 108 people were wounded, according to state media.
Expert says fragments point to a U.S. weapon
A weapons expert told The Associated Press that images of fragments of ordnance that Iranian media said was used in the strike on Mallahi’s home, indicated that it was an "American air-delivered guided weapon."
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, initially identified the weapon as a SLAM-ER cruise missile, an air-launched missile that can be retargeted in flight by a human operator. But after examining further imagery, he said it was more likely to be a JSOW, a type of guided bomb, though he did not rule out a SLAM-ER and said multiple weapons may have hit the site.
U.S. Central Command declined to comment on the analyst's findings.
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El Deeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Amir-Hussein Radjy in Zurich, Fatma Khaled in Cairo and Konstantin Toropin in Nuremberg, Germany, contributed.
