American forces reportedly fired a missile that disperses small tungsten pellets at the city of Lamerd
FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises after US-Israeli airstrikes in Tehran, Iran, on March 13, 2026. © Fatemeh Bahrami / Anadolu / Getty Images
The
US struck a school and sports hall in the southern Iranian city of
Lamerd with a ballistic missile previously untested in combat, the New
York Times reported on Sunday, citing its own analysis of footage and
weapons experts.
The
attack occurred during the first wave of US and Israeli strikes on
February 28 – the same day an American missile destroyed a girls’
elementary school in the Iranian city of Minab, killing 175 people, most
of them children. According to Iranian officials, at least 21 people
were killed in Lamerd.
The NYT
said the damage from the strike is consistent with the Precision Strike
Missile (PrSM), which explodes above its targets, dispersing small
tungsten pellets. The weapon completed its prototype phase only last
year, according to the Pentagon.
As in Minab, the targeted school
and sports hall in Lamerd were located directly next to an Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facility, the NYT said. The newspaper
added that archival satellite imagery shows the school and hall have
been walled off from the IRGC site for at least 15 years and were listed
as civilian facilities on popular online mapping services, including
Google Maps.
The NYT said that, since the missile is new, it is more difficult to assess whether the PrSM strikes were “intentional” or stemmed from a design flaw or faulty intelligence.
More
than 1,000 civilians have been killed by US and Israeli strikes in
Iran, according to official data. Although US President Donald Trump has
refused to admit responsibility for the attack on the school in Minab,
the Pentagon has opened an investigation into the incident.