US military strikes in southern Iran appear to have destroyed a drinking water facility serving more than 20,000 people, according to an investigation by The New York Times based on satellite imagery, video evidence, and weapons analysis.
The strikes, which occurred near the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, reportedly hit two small water storage structures in the village of Bemani in Iran’s Hormozgan province.
Iranian media earlier reported that the attack damaged two water tanks in the district, disrupting water supplies to tens of thousands of residents.
The Times’ Visual Investigations team identified the damaged structures through satellite imagery and geolocation analysis, concluding that the site was part of a local drinking water network.
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Bomb fragments point to US-made munition
Images published by Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency showed weapons fragments recovered from the strike site.
Specialists from the Open Source Munitions Portal, an organisation that catalogues weapons debris from conflict zones worldwide, identified the remnants as parts of a GBU-39, a US-made precision-guided bomb weighing about 250 pounds.
