A New York Times visual investigation concluded that overnight on Thursday, July 30, 2026, a U.S. airstrike dropped a 2,000-pound Mark-84 bomb, one of the largest conventional munitions in the American arsenal, on a family's home in the densely populated Chah-Tangu neighborhood of Qeshm City, on Iran's Qeshm Island overlooking the Strait of Hormuz. The Times based its finding on satellite imagery, photographs, videos, and munitions fragments: the impact crater measured at least 30 feet across, and debris and damaged vehicles were scattered more than 200 feet away.
No military installation was identified near the home, and no military casualties were reported in the area. Iranian officials identified the dead as Qeysar Jafari, a taxi driver, his wife Zahra Jafari, and their two-year-old son, Sina. Two of their other children, Mohammad Reza and Mehdi, were pulled from the rubble alive and are in stable condition. About 20 neighboring households were displaced, and two warehouses outside the city were destroyed in the same wave of strikes, which the Jerusalem Post reported a U.S. official described as “about twice the size of the previous night.”
U.S. Central Command said, “We are aware of the reports and looking into them. The US military never targets civilians,” but did not identify an intended target. Legal experts questioned the strike. Stanford law professor Tom Dannenbaum said using such munitions in crowded areas “is very difficult to reconcile with” the duty to minimize civilian harm, and former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth asked, “Why did the US military drop a huge 2,000-pound bomb in a densely populated residential area?” (see Trump Launches a War With Iran Without Congressional Approval, Killing the Supreme Leader, Bombing a School Full of Children, and Triggering a Regional War and The Pentagon Is Hiding Iran War Casualties: Official Count Says 303 Wounded, but the Actual Total May Exceed 750).