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More than 1,000 civilians have been killed in the first five days of U.S.-Israeli bombings of Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
The rights group said it had aggregated reports of 1,097 civilian deaths and over 5,000 injuries so far in the war that began in the early hours of Saturday morning with a massive wave of airstrikes across the country that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other Iranian military and political leaders.
It said an additional 880 reported deaths were currently under review for verification and classification.
Read more: More Than 100 Reported Killed in Strike on Girls’ Elementary School in Iran. Here’s What We Know
TIME cannot independently verify the casualty figures, and the number of children reported killed in the strike on the school has ranged from 108 to 181.
The news comes as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced airstrikes would intensify across Iran, telling reporters on Wednesday that U.S. forces were delivering “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
“Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” Hegseth said. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight. And it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they are down, which is exactly how it should be.”
The Israel Defense Forces, meanwhile, said it had begun “broad scale strikes targeting Iranian terror regime targets in Tehran” in a statement Wednesday morning.
Videos from Tehran showed large explosions across the capital on Wednesday. Iran’s state television said a mourning ceremony for Khamenei had been postponed due to intensive airstrikes in the city.
HRANA said a “range of sites and infrastructure, including several military bases, two medical centers, and one residential area,” were…
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