Five killed in suspected US strike on wedding in Iran

At least five people were killed in a suspected US attack that hit a wedding in Iran after Tehran and Washington exchanged the heaviest strikes between them since July.

The Iranian Red Crescent (IRC) has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the incident, calling for “an independent, impartial, thorough, and effective investigation” due to the “civilian character of the location”.

Iran has accused the US of “war crimes”, but the US maintains that it does not target civilians.

Below we look at how the attack took place and what both parties have said about it.

The strike took place on Tuesday night at around 9.30pm in Kuhestak, on the southern coast of Iran.

Iranian state media reported that five people were killed including a four-year-old child.

The IRC said a further 67 people were injured and that the death toll is expected to rise “given the critical condition of some of the injured”.

The Hormozgan Province Red Crescent Society, a local branch, reported most of the injured were women and children.

BBC Verify said it had verified footage showing bloody shoes and rubble strewn across the floor in the aftermath of the bombing.

It is unclear why the building was hit, but the BBC located a communications tower 130 metres away from the location of the party. The tower was damaged and toppled over in footage shared from the aftermath of the strike.

On Thursday, Iranian mourners carried caskets for the victims as they assembled in the late afternoon outside Kuhestak.

“This is the body of Martyr Amir-Mohammad Karimi, a four-year-old child who was martyred in an attack on the country’s south by the criminal American regime,” a reporter from Iran's Mehr news agency said in footage from the funeral.

It was filmed in front of a pick-up truck carrying a flag-draped coffin beneath a canopy of palm fronds.

In other footage of the funeral, mourners threw petals into the air as music played and a casket was carried past a row of soldiers standing to attention with rifles.

The village in Sirik County is situated along a stretch of the coast of the Strait of Hormuz that was hit by heavy US airstrikes late on Tuesday.

"American evil in the region will be met with heavier, more widespread, and devastating responses, and any country that cooperates with the aggressive American army must accept its dangerous consequences,” Iran’s joint military command said in a statement on Wednesday.

“In the new list of war crimes and attacks by the US army on civilian targets in Iran, after schools, stadiums, and residential homes, now add wedding ceremonies to this list too,” the IRC said in a statement.

US Central Command told the BBC that it is “looking into” the incident.

Spokesperson Navy Captain Tim Hawkins told the media: “We are aware of reports, which originated from Iranian state media. The US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps].”