New US missile hit Iranian sports hall and school, analysis shows | World News

4 min readUpdated: Mar 30, 2026 12:53 PM On the first day of the war with Iran, a weapon bearing the hallmarks of a newly developed U.S.-made ballic missile was used in an attack that struck a sports hall and adjacent elementary school near a military facility in southern Iran, according to weapons experts and a visual analysis The New York Times. Local officials cited in Iranian media said this strike and others near in the city of Lamerd killed at least 21 people.
The Feb. 28 attack occurred the same day as a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile struck a school in the city of Minab, several hundred miles away, killing 175 people. In the case of Lamerd, though, it involved a weapon that had been untested in combat.
The Times verified videos of two strikes in Lamerd, as well as aftermath footage from the attacks. Times reporters and munitions experts found that the weapon features, explosions and damage are consent with a short-range ballic missile called the Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM (pronounced like “prism”), which is designed to detonate just above its target and blast small tungsten pellets outward.
Videos that capture one strike, in a residential area about 900 feet from the sports hall and school, show the weapon in flight, with a dinctive silhouette that matches the PrSM. The missile erupts in a large fireball midair.
Another video, filmed from a security camera directly across from the sports hall, shows the strike on the hall and adjacent school. While the video does not capture an incoming missile, it clearly shows an explosion just above the structure.
Photos of the aftermath show both sites were pockmarked with holes, apparently from the tungsten pellets.
There is an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or I.R.G.C., compound directly next to the sports hall. It’s not known if it was struck in the attack.Story continues below this ad
The PrSM completed prototype testing only last year, according to an Army press release. On March 1, U.S. Central Command posted a video of a PrSM launch from the first 24 hours of the war. Days later, Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads Central Command, said the PrSM had been used in combat for the first time. The military has been touting its debut.
Since the weapon is so new, it’s more difficult to assess whether the PrSM strikes in Lamerd were intentional, stemmed from a design flaw or manufacturing defect, or were the result of improper target selection.
It’s unclear if or how the school or sports hall might be affiliated with the I.R.G.C. compound, but according to archival satellite imagery, they have been walled off from the compound for at least 15 years.
The sports hall, at the time of the strikes, was being used a female volleyball team, according to Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s representative to the United Nations. Photos and videos posted to a social media account linked to the school show the premises were regularly used children. The sports hall has also for years been publicly identified as a civilian-use facility on readily available digital mapping platforms, including Google Maps, Apple Maps and Wikimapia, according to a review The Times.Story continues below this ad
Ground-level and satellite images of the aftermath show the sports hall with scorch marks and a partly collapsed roof. Footage from inside the school shows blown-out windows, fire damage and splotches of blood.