More than 1,000 Civilians Killed in U.S.-Israeli Bombing of Iran, Rights Group Says

More than 1,000 civilians have been killed in the first five days of U.S.-Israeli bombings of Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). The rights group said it had aggregated reports of 1,097 civilian deaths and over 5,000 injuries so far in the war that began in the early hours of Saturday morning with a massive wave of airstrikes across the country that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other Iranian military and political leaders. It said an additional 880 reported deaths were currently under review for verification and classification. Read more: More Than 100 Reported Killed in Strike on Girls’ Elementary School in Iran. Here’s What We Know TIME cannot independently verify the casualty figures, and the number of children reported killed in the strike on the school has ranged from 108 to 181. The news comes as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced airstrikes would intensify across Iran, telling reporters on Wednesday that U.S. forces were delivering “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”  “Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” Hegseth said. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight. And it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they are down, which is exactly how it should be.” The Israel Defense Forces, meanwhile, said it had begun “broad scale strikes targeting Iranian terror regime targets in Tehran” in a statement Wednesday morning. Videos from Tehran showed large explosions across the capital on Wednesday. Iran’s state television said a mourning ceremony for Khamenei had been postponed due to intensive airstrikes in the city. HRANA said a “range of sites and infrastructure, including several military bases, two medical centers, and one residential area,” were hit by airstrikes between March 2 and March 3, including reported damage to Shohada Hospital in Sarpol-e Zahab and a field hospital in Salas-e Babajani. The rights group added that the strikes could be in violation of humanitarian law, but expressed that these were “preliminary findings and remains subject to verification.” When asked for comment on the claims of civilian death toll, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) directed TIME to Tuesday’s comments by Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of CENTCOM.  “We’ve just begun,” Cooper said in the video posted to social media. He also said that the U.S. has struck nearly 2,000 targets in the first 100 hours of the operation. In Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said Israeli strikes there have killed 72 people and displaced more than 83,000. Iran’s retaliatory strikes have hit U.S. bases and consulates across the Middle East since Saturday, as well as civilian areas of Gulf countries and Israel. Those attacks have killed at least 11 people in Israel and three in the United Arab Emirates. Six U.S. service members have also died so far in the fighting.   A school tragedy  The worst civilian casualty of the war so far came in the opening wave of strikes on Saturday, when a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran was bombed while children were in class.   The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, a city in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran, on Saturday morning, the start of the school week in Iran.  Shiva Amelirad, a Canada-based representative of the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, a network of teachers’ unions in Iran, told TIME that at least 108 children had been killed in the attack, according to information she had received from sources in Minab. Thousands gathered in Minab on Tuesday to attend a mass funeral for the children killed in the strike. Iran’s state television showed parents holding photographs of the children they had lost in the strike and coffins draped in the flag of the Islamic Republic carried through the crowd.  A United Nations panel of experts said on Wednesday ​it was “deeply disturbed” by the incident, which it said killed more than 160 children, citing reports. It said most of the victims appear to have been schoolgirls aged seven to 12.  Read More: After Khamenei: What Iran, and the World, Face Next “The Committee is alarmed ​by reports of strikes on civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, which have injured and traumatised children, and claimed many young lives,” the U.N. ​Committee on the Rights of the Child said in a ​statement. The U.N. education agency, UNESCO, called it “a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law.” When asked on Wednesday about the strike on the school, Hegseth said, “We’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets.” Amnesty International on Tuesday raised concerns for civilians in Iran and across the region.  “Aerial attacks impacting schools, medical facilities or residential buildings, as well as the firing of ballistic missiles and other explosive weapons with wide area effects into densely populated areas, raise grave concerns of possible violations of international humanitarian law,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, in a statement.  “Parties to the conflict must immediately refrain from and cease unlawful attacks, whether direct attacks on civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, or the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas. They must take all feasible precautions to prevent civilian harm,” she added.