Report says U.S. forces struck an Iranian family’s home with a 2,000-pound bomb, but no military target was found anywhere near the site

The United States dropped a large bomb on a family home on Iran’s Qeshm Island overnight on Thursday, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on videos, photos, and satellite images. Iranian officials said the strike killed a husband, his wife, and their 2-year-old son. Two of their other children were pulled from the wreckage alive.

Weapons experts who reviewed the crater and pieces of the bomb said the weapon appears to have been a Mark-84, a 2,000-pound bomb that is among the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. military’s arsenal. The time and location of the strike match where U.S. forces were carrying out operations that night. The findings raise questions about what the U.S. was aiming at and why a bomb of this size was used.

The strike hit a crowded neighborhood on Qeshm Island, which is located in the Strait of Hormuz in southern Iran. It appears to have been one of several strikes the U.S. carried out that night in response to earlier attacks by Iran on a base used by American troops in Jordan.

No sign of a military site was found near the home

The Times found no evidence of any military facility close to the family’s home. There were also no reports of military deaths from the strike, something Iranian authorities typically announce when they happen. The strike came amid a broader U.S. military response, as U.S. forces launched airstrikes on Iran following the deaths of American soldiers in Jordan.

Iranian officials said the blast forced around 20 nearby households to leave their homes. Videos of the aftermath show wreckage and damaged cars scattered more than 200 feet from the site. In the same round of strikes, two warehouses outside the city were also destroyed, based on the visual evidence reviewed by The Times.

U.S. Central Command confirmed it struck targets in southern Iran early Thursday. The command said it was looking into the reports of civilian deaths, but did not answer questions about what it had been targeting, which weapon was used, or what steps were taken to protect civilians. “We are aware of the reports and looking into them,” said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a Central Command spokesman. “The U.S. military never targets civilians.”

The Times matched details from video footage with satellite images to confirm the strike’s exact location and measure the size of the crater. The attack took place in the Chah-Tangu neighborhood of Qeshm City, an area packed tightly with homes. Several structures were destroyed, and the crater left behind measured at least 30 feet wide.

Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician who now works as an analyst at Armament Research Services, said the size of the crater and the damage to nearby buildings point to a Mark-84 bomb fitted with a JDAM kit, a device that turns an unguided bomb into one guided by GPS. He said photos shared by Iranian media appear to show pieces of this guidance system, though The Times could not confirm exactly where those fragments were found.

Frederic Gras, a French weapons consultant who also examined the images, agreed that the size of the crater matches an air-dropped 2,000-pound Mark-84 bomb. He said the bomb seems to have exploded below the ground rather than on impact, and that the sandy soil absorbed some of the blast, pushing the force downward and limiting damage to the surrounding area. Gras also said the metal piece found at the scene was the tail section of a JDAM guidance kit.

According to a U.S. Army office that manages ammunition for the Pentagon, bombs of this size are typically meant for targets such as buildings, rail yards, and transportation routes. Experts say using this kind of weapon in crowded residential areas can cause serious harm to civilians. 

It is still not clear who or what the intended target of the strike was. Under international humanitarian law, military forces are required to weigh the expected harm to civilians against the military value of a strike. The strike also followed earlier tensions between the two countries, with one report indicating that Iran had struck U.S. forces in Jordan multiple times before the deadly attack that prompted the U.S. response.

Tom Dannenbaum, a law professor at Stanford University, said forces are expected to take “all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm, including in its selection of munitions, times of attack and, whenever circumstances allow, by issuing effective advance warnings.” Dannenbaum added that using a 2,000-pound bomb in a densely populated area “is very difficult to reconcile with” that responsibility.

Ahmad Nafisi, a deputy governor of Hormozgan Province, was quoted by the semiofficial Iranian outlet Fars News identifying the three people killed as Zahra Jafari, her husband Qeysar Jafari, who worked as a taxi driver, and their son Sina. A video report from another semiofficial outlet, Mehr News, showed a clock inside one of the destroyed homes that had stopped at just before 3:40 a.m. local time, shortly after Central Command said its strikes on Iran had begun that night.

The two surviving Jafari children, Mohammad Reza and Mehdi, remained in the hospital but were reported to be in stable condition, according to Iranian officials.