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civilian casualties
Pro-War Republican Senator Apologizes for Iran Girls' School Massacre After Trump Blames Tehran
An ongoing US military probe has determined that the United States launched the Tomahawk missile attack that killed around 175 people—mostly children—in Minab on the first day of the war on Iran.
Mar 11, 2026
A Republican senator apologized this week for what US military investigators have reportedly determined was an American missile strike on a girls' school in southern Iran that killed around 175 people—mostly children—amid continued sidestepping by President Donald Trump, who has blamed Tehran for the massacre.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.)—who supports the US-Israeli war on Iran—first apologized for the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab during a Monday interview with NBC News senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur.
"It was terrible," Kennedy said. "We made a mistake... I'm just so sorry it happened."
Kennedy repeated his apology Tuesday on CNN, telling political correspondent Kasie Hunt: "The investigation may prove me wrong. I hope so. The kids are still dead, but I think it was a horrible, horrible mistake. I wish it hadn't happened. I'm sorry it happened."
1. GOP Senator John Kennedy on why he felt it was important to apologize and acknowledge the truth about the bombing of a school in Minab, Iran, which multiple reports indicate was caused by a U.S. military targeting error.
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— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yasharali.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 4:51 PM
Reuters first reported last week that US military investigators believe American forces carried out the school strike, a preliminary conclusion that came on the heels of a New York Times analysis that found the US was “most likely to have carried out the strike" due to its near-simultaneous bombing of a nearby Iranian naval base.
This week, Iranian officials displayed fragments from what is believed to be the Tomahawk missile used in the school bombing. The remnants were marked with the names of two US arms companies, a Pentagon contract number, and the words "Made in USA."
On Wednesday, Tfhe New York Times reported that the ongoing military probe has determined that the US launched the Tomahawk strike, which paramedics and victims' relatives said was a so-called "double-tap," in which the attacker bombs a target and then follows up with a second strike meant to kill survivors and first responders. Investigators attribute the strike to a "targeting error," according to the Times.
This, as Trump—who warned as his illegal war started that "bombs will be dropping everywhere"—continued sidestepping blame for the attack.
On Saturday, Trump said aboard Air Force One that "based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.”
Two days later, the president falsely claimed that Iran has "some" Tomahawk missiles and may have used one of them to bomb the school. Iran has no Tomahawks—which are highly restricted and sold only to a handful of close allies—and the US does not sell weapons to the Iranian government, with the notable exception of the Iran-Contra Affair, when the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Tehran in order to fund anti-communist Contra terrorists in Nicaragua.
Other senior Trump administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz have declined to back the president's claims and have instead deferred to the ongoing military investigation.
Kennedy told NBC News and CNN that the school bombing was unintentional.
"Other countries do that sort of thing intentionally, like Russia," he told Kapur. "We would never do that intentionally."
Since then-President George W. Bush launched the so-called Global War on Terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, more than 430,000 civilians have been killed in over half a dozen countries, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
In 2020, the Costs of War Project reported a 330% rise in civilian casualties in Afghanistan following the first Trump administration's move to loosen military rules of engagement meant to protect noncombatants. While campaigning for president in 2016, Trump infamously vowed to "bomb the shit" out of Islamic State militants and "take out their families"—a war crime—and after his election he ramped up bombing of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries, killing thousands of civilians.
The Biden administration subsequently attempted to tackle the issue, publishing the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), which laid out a series of policy steps aimed at preventing and responding to the death and injury of civilians.
However, since returning to office, Trump has effectively sidelined the plan. Prioritizing "lethality," Hegseth said at the outset of the current war that US forces won't be bound by "stupid rules of engagement."
Israel, which is bombing Iran along with US forces while simultaneously striking Lebanon and Gaza—where more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded during 29 months of genocidal war—dramatically loosened its rules of engagement following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, effectively allowing for an unlimited number of civilian deaths in any strike targeting any member of the militant resistance group, no matter how low-ranking.
According to leaked Israel Defense Forces data, 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the US-backed war were civilians.
Hundreds of Iranian and Lebanese civilians have been killed by US and Israeli attacks since February 28. US and Israeli use of artificial intelligence systems to select bombing targets exponentially faster than any person has also raised concerns regarding a lack of meaningful human oversight. One former IDF officer said AI enabled a "mass assassination factory" in Gaza.
Last year's US and Israeli attacks on Iran also killed hundreds of civilians, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran.
Kennedy's apology—which some observers dismissed due to the senator's support for the war and rejection of a war powers resolution meant to limit Trump's ability to attack Iran without the legally required congressional approval—is still notable, as US leaders, and especially Republicans, are usually highly reluctant to say they're sorry for civilian deaths.
For example, after the USS Vincennes accidentally shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988, killing all 290 civilians aboard, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush—who was running for president—infamously declared, "I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever; I don't care what the facts are."
The history of US-Iran relations they don’t teach you:
A month after the US shot down Iran Air Flight 665, killing 290 passengers, George H.W. Bush proudly declared:
“I’ll never apologize for the United States, I don’t care what the facts are.” https://t.co/1nNvIYR9MX pic.twitter.com/iFa3Ydh4Fo
— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) February 25, 2026
Two years later, Bush, then president, awarded the Vincennes officer in charge of air warfare a commendation medal for the “heroic achievement” of "quickly and precisely" downing the civilian airliner. The ship's captain was also honored with the Legion of Merit for his “outstanding service.”
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At Least 12 Somali Civilians—Including 8 Children—Killed in Suspected US Airstrikes
The US has carried out nearly 100 strikes in Somalia this year alone, with scant coverage by the corporate media.
Nov 17, 2025
At least a dozen civilians—eight children, three women, and an elderly man—were killed in weekend bombings that local sources claimed were the latest of nearly 100 US airstrikes in the Horn of Africa nation this year alone.
The Somali Guardian reported that the strikes occurred near the southern Somali town of Jamame in the Lower Juba region. In addition to the 12 civilians killed, nine others were reportedly wounded in the attack.
While no one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) acknowledged carrying out weekend "airstrikes targeting al-Shabaab," an al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group, near Jamame.
“Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” added AFRICOM—which earlier this year stopped sharing information about civilian harm caused by US attacks.
Somali Guardian reported that Danab, a US-trained Somali special forces unit, was also conducting operations in villages around Jamame. Danab often receives US air support while carrying out such missions.
The weekend strikes follow a Danab raid in Balcad district last week in which children were reportedly killed.
"Three were murdered including 2- and 3-year-olds," Somali activist Adan Abdulle said on Sunday. "This is not the first time that US or US-trained forces have murdered innocent civilians in cold blood. What makes these murders stand out is the callousness with which pressure was exerted on grieving families to keep quiet."
The latest strikes came amid a surge in US bombings targeting Somalia-based militants during US President Donald Trump's second term. Antiwar.com's Dave DeCamp has counted 96 US airstrikes on Somalia this year alone, based on AFRICOM data.
"President Trump has shattered the annual record for US airstrikes in Somalia, which he previously set at 63 during his first term in 2019," DeCamp noted Sunday. "For context, President [Joe] Biden launched a total of 51 airstrikes in Somalia throughout his four years in office, and President [Barack] Obama launched 48 over eight years."
Trump's record bombardment of Somalia has received almost no coverage in the US corporate media.
According to the UK-based watchdog Airwars, US forces have killed at least 92 and as many as 167 civilians in Somalia since 2007, when then-President George W. Bush ordered strikes on the country as part of the War on Terror.
The Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson School for International and Public Affairs says that the open-ended US-led war has left more than 940,000 people dead, upward of 432,000 of them civilians, in at least seven countries, since shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
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Don't Let a Fascist Like Trump Act as Judge, Jury, and Executioner
What makes these strikes so appealing to President Donald Trump is that it gives him the godlike power to look down from above and smite anyone who displeases him. But that won't stop the flow of drugs.
Oct 24, 2025
The Trump administration has been blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean—and now one in the Pacific—claiming without evidence that they’re “drug boats.”
These are extrajudicial executions outside any system of law. And there’s a reason we shouldn’t allow drug warriors to act as judge, jury, and executioner: because over the years, they’ve made many, many tragic mistakes and killed lots of civilians.
I’ve seen countless tragedies like these in my decades studying drug policy. Two were particularly egregious.
In 2001, the United States was using local air forces to shoot down alleged trafficking planes over the Peruvian Amazon. In this case, a surveillance plane flown by CIA contractors misidentified a pontoon plane and had it shot down. Instead of traffickers, they killed a missionary from Michigan named Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter.
Would it be okay for the Mexican military to blow up a US fishing boat because they believed it was smuggling deadly guns into Mexico, even if they offered no evidence? Would that be acceptable to this administration?
The second case was an incident in Honduras in 2012, where the Drug Enforcement Administration and local forces mistakenly opened fire on a water taxi, killing four people—including two pregnant women—and then tried to cover it up.
What makes these strikes so appealing to President Donald Trump is that it gives him the godlike power to look down from above and smite anyone who displeases him, without consequence. He’s even told sick jokes about local fishermen in the Caribbean now being afraid to get in their boats.
If he’s allowed to normalize this kind of international extrajudicial killing, I don’t think it’s a far leap for him to try it domestically.
Imagine a cop chasing a guy down the street, getting hot and tired, and shooting the suspect in the back. The cop probably wouldn’t tell a judge, “Well your honor, I didn’t want to chase him, so I just shot him.” But here’s the president declaring on the international stage: We’re not going to do police work. We’re just going to kill people.
Now imagine the shoe’s on the other foot. Most of the killings in Mexico are done by guns smuggled from the United States. They call it the “River of Iron,” and it’s responsible for literally hundreds of thousands of killings in the country in the past 20 years.
So would it be okay for the Mexican military to blow up a US fishing boat because they believed it was smuggling deadly guns into Mexico, even if they offered no evidence? Would that be acceptable to this administration?
The drug war acts as a price support for drug dealers. That’s why no one wants the drug war to continue more than the smugglers themselves.
Here’s what drug warriors don’t understand: The US isn’t under armed attack from drug traffickers. It’s actually the opposite.
Most drugs cost pennies per dose to manufacture. But the higher the risk to the individual smuggler—like the risk of getting arrested, shut down, or blown up—the more they can charge as drugs move down the smuggling chain.
By the time drugs reach users, they’ve snowballed in value. But consumers in the US have proven more than willing to pay hyper-inflated prices, and even risk arrest, for drugs—just as drinkers were once willing to pay bootleggers huge sums for booze during Prohibition.
In short, our policies create tremendous value for substances that are relatively cheap. We’re making trafficking more profitable, not less.
So if the US bombs a trafficker—or an alleged trafficker—we escalate the risk premium for everyone else in that industry. It’s a bad deal for you if you’re the one who’s killed, but it creates a “job opening” for others in the operation, or a rival cartel, to take over that turf—which is now more lucrative.
The drug war acts as a price support for drug dealers. That’s why no one wants the drug war to continue more than the smugglers themselves. This was ultimately why the US ended alcohol prohibition.
Addiction is a public health problem and requires public health solutions, not allowing someone like Trump to play judge, jury, and executioner—at home or abroad.
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