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Within a week of the strike, the first two stages of a "battle damage assessment" focused on answering basic questions including whether the strike hit and damaged the intended target had been completed, indicating that the US was responsible for striking the Shajareh Tayyiba school in Minab, the sources said.

But a third standard review stage, a step where analysts " typically from the Defense Intelligence Agency " review the entire body of relevant satellite imagery and other intelligence sources to provide a more holistic determination about what took place and how a strike impacted the broader mission, was not ordered, the sources said. That review would almost always be conducted in the immediate aftermath of a noteworthy strike, they said, but it had not begun as of early July.