A US strike in southern Iran on Tuesday hit a residential building where a wedding reception was taking place, according to local Iranian officials and the Iranian Red Crescent.
Ahmad Nafisi, the deputy governor of Iran’s Hormozgan Province, told Iranian media the strike hit a home in the city of Kuhestak in Hormozgan’s Sirik county and killed at least five people, including a young child, and wounded 68 people.
According to Iran’s PressTV, Hormozgan’s Red Crescent Society described the attack as “a US missile strike that sent shrapnel into a residential home in Kuhestak, where a wedding celebration was taking place.”
The Associated Press reported that Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for US Central Command, said the US was aware of the reports of civilian casualties and noted that they “originated from Iranian state media.” Hawkins said the US “doesn’t target civilians,” but a large number of civilians have been killed in the US bombing campaign, most notably the more than 100 schoolchildren killed by the February 28 US strike on an elementary school in Minab.
Iranian officials are vowing revenge for the strike in Kuhestak, and the IRGC has been launching attacks on US bases across the region since the US began large-scale airstrikes along Iran’s coast on Tuesday.
“Targeting a wedding and slaughtering innocent civilians in Kuhestak, Iran, is the ultimate proof of the utter desperation of the fake defenders of human rights, a repetition of their atrocities in Minab and Lamerd,” Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, wrote on X.
“Make no mistake: these crimes will not go unpunished. Nothing will protect them from the crushing will of Iran’s Armed Forces,” Azizi added.