Strike on girls’ elementary school in south of Iran has killed 148 people and injured 95 others, according to Iran state media
The death toll from a missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran has risen to almost 150, according to Iranian state media.
Mizan news agency, the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, reported that the number killed in Saturday’s strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran had risen to 148 killed, with 95 others wounded. The news agency cited Ebrahim Taheri, a prosecutor in Minab.
The school, which was struck on Saturday morning, appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.
Video and photographs from the aftermath of the strike, which have been verified as authentic and geolocated to the site, show hundreds of people gathered around the partially collapsed, smoking building, with rubble strewn across the street and men digging through it for victims. Screams can be heard in the background. In some of the images, schoolbags and textbooks are being pulled from the debris.
I am really bothered by the fact that claims like this are echoed by media outlets unchecked, while making them seem like journalism by appending ‘according to [directly involved party] sources’, maybe even ‘can’t be independently verified’.
I mean, Reuters has confirmed that this strike happened and that the video material is credible. Okay, so far so good. That’s bad, and you can report on it and raise questions based off of it. You have something to investigate, you can generate tons of content by discussing adjacent topics, but no, media decides to go for round 2 and report some unverified death toll.
Whether there are 2 or 200 dead children, the story is the same. Why give inherently unreliable sources a stage and credibility by echoing their claim? It’s so frustrating that the wider media landscape is based on grabbing peoples attention, rather than good journalism.