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WASHINGTON — <\/span>Outdated intelligence likely led to the United States carrying out a deadly missile strike on an elementary school in Iran<\/a> that killed over 165 people, many of them children, in the opening hours of the conflict, according to a U.S. official and a second person briefed on findings of a preliminary U.S military investigation into the incident.<\/p>\n The bombing of the school and its casualties involving children has become a focal point of the war, and if ultimately confirmed to be at the hands of the U.S., would also stand among the highest civilian casualty events caused by the American military operations in the last two decades.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump initially blamed Iran for the attack, later said he wasn\u2019t certain who was to blame, and then said he would accept the results of the Pentagon\u2019s investigation. The issue took on added urgency on Wednesday after the New York Times first reported that a preliminary investigation found that the U.S. was responsible.<\/p>\n U.S. Central Command relied on target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the person familiar with the preliminary finding.<\/p>\n The agency did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The preliminary finding prompted immediate calls for more information from the Pentagon. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that \u201cthe investigation is still ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n Both the U.S. official and the person familiar with the matter spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. <\/p>\n Dozens of Democratic senators demanded answers from the Trump administration on Wednesday as a growing body of evidence suggested that the U.S. was likely responsible for the strike<\/a>.<\/p>\n The letter from more than 45 senators pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on whether the U.S. was culpable for the strike and what previous analysis of the building had been done. The senators also raised concerns about the Pentagon hollowing-out a congressionally mandated office set up specifically to reduce civilian casualties.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder this administration, budgetary and personnel cuts at the Department have robbed military commands of crucial resources to prevent and respond to civilian casualties,\u201d the senators wrote. Those include cuts at U.S. Central Command, whose forces are leading the military campaign against Iran, and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was signed into law in 2022 as part of a Pentagon ambition to reduce death tolls from strikes.<\/p>\n The revelation could threaten to erode public support in the U.S. effort against Iran at a time when Trump, who as a candidate railed against American involvement in \u201cstupid\u201d overseas wars, faces persistent questions about the purpose and of the conflict and what would bring it to an end. <\/p>\n One former Pentagon official said the Feb. 28 strike that hit Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, which is located near a neighboring base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, came as a natural result of changes made by the Trump administration to reduce staff to mitigate civilian harm and Hegseth\u2019s emphasis on lethality over legality. <\/p>\n There are several indications that the strike on the school may have been avoidable.<\/p>\n It happened Saturday morning, the start of the Iranian school week, when the building was full of young children. Satellite analysis by the AP shows that the school, as well as other targets struck the same day, had characteristics visible from the air that could have identified them as civilian sites before they were struck. <\/p>\n