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US investigating if missile hit Iran wedding, Vance says
Confirmed
In Short: Reports emerged that a missile attack struck a wedding celebration in Iran's southern town of Kuhestak, Hormozgan, on Tuesday night, killing four people and injuring 67, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society
Reports emerged that a missile attack struck a wedding celebration in Iran's southern town of Kuhestak, Hormozgan, on Tuesday night, killing four people and injuring 67, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS).
Based on shrapnel fragments found in Kuhestak, defence experts suggested the missile might be a variant of the AGM-84K SLAM-ER, an advanced precision-guided, air-launched cruise missile with 'surgical strike capability,' according to Al Jazeera and BBC reports.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, known as Vance, expressed scepticism about these reports during a White House briefing, stating, 'I will say that the Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what's happened in the conflict thus far. So I'm extremely sceptical of this.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei, declared the incident a 'war crime,' while the IRCS reported that shrapnel from the missile hit a family wedding ceremony, killing at least four people and injuring 67 others.
US Central Command spokespersons confirmed that missiles were fired the same day over 'attempted attacks' by Iran on American forces, but they maintained that the US never targets civilians.
Background
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and historically known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south.
What's confirmed
What's still developing
- A picture distributed by the Iranian Red Crescent Society purportedly showing the remains of a building which was hosting the wedding ceremony BBC Verify confirmed a video and two images taken on Tuesday near Kuhestak's coast that showed a telecommunications tower being destroyed, and other videos from Tuesday and Wednesday showed severely damaged houses about 130m (427ft) north of the tower.
- US Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Thursday that the US is "very fully" investigating the military's reported strikes on a wedding in Iran which killed at least four people this week.
- "I've been briefed to the extent that I know that we're investigating," Vance said during the White House briefing.
- The US, Vance said, does not plan to "depend on the Iranians behaving responsibly or negotiating in good faith".
- Iranian state media shared videos showing debris and damage at what they said was the wedding site in Kuhestak.
- The wedding site was located close to a telecommunications tower that was destroyed in the alleged strike, said Moin Arjmand, director of the Balochistan Human Rights Documentation Network, a foreign-based monitoring group that documents human rights abuses in Iran.
- US and Israeli military officials have said their operations have targeted Iranian command and control centers, missile sites, and other military and state facilities.
- Four military weapons experts who reviewed footage for Reuters said the damage pattern was consistent with a direct strike rather than debris from a munition that missed another target Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the United States is investigating a strike that killed five people at an Iranian wedding earlier this week.