In the early hours of 14 July 2026, an alleged U.S. airstrike reportedly killed three people at a park rangers station in the remote community of Seyyed Jowzar, in Tarom Rural District, in Hormozgan Province, south-eastern Iran.
Mehrshad Hassanzadeh, 24, Mehdi Hassanzadeh, 21, and Elnaz Karimi, 24, were reported killed in the strike. Sources reported that the three victims were the sons and soon-to-be daughter-in-law, respectively, of park ranger/game warden Jassan Hassanzadeh, whose home – a ranger station – the victims were residing in at the time of the strike. Jassan was not present at the time of the attack.
Photos of Mehrshad and Mehdi were posted to Instagram, and Zoomit.ir carried photographs of the two brothers along with Elnaz Karimi, who was engaged to Mehrshad.
IRNA, citing Brigadier General Reza Rastgar, commander of the Department of the Environment’s Protection Unit, reported that the “Seyyed Jovzar ranger station in the Taram Protected Area…was struck by two projectiles,” and that the station building was “completely destroyed.” It went on to explain that due to the remoteness of their posts, it is not uncommon for families to live together at a ranger’s post, as was the case here. The family had reportedly lived there for twenty years by the time of the attack.
News site Hamshahri Online reported that the station in the village of Seyyed Jowzar had no military function and was not located near “any military activities or installations,” quoting an officer in the Department of the Environment, Kazem Sharifi, and Masihi Taziani, Director General of the Department of the Environment of Hormozgan Province.
News service Zoomit.ir posited that a telecommunications tower, reportedly decommissioned five years previously, could have caused the rangers station to be mistaken for a military installation. It quoted the deputy head of the Telecommunications Company of Iran as saying: “It is possible that such an incident—the strike on an environmental telecommunications tower—occurred as a result of incomplete information; this cannot be ruled out.”
Quoting another ranger, Zoomit.ir reported that “[Jassan] had lived at this station for nearly 20 years. He had endured years of danger from confrontations with illegal hunters, nights of patrol, and the hardships of life in a protected area. But in the end, it was not the hunters who caused him the greatest loss. With two years left before retirement, he lost everything he had beneath the rubble in the missile attack: his children, his household belongings, and two cars—a Peugeot and a Pride—whose crumpled remains are barely recognisable even in the photographs.”
IRNA carried two photographs, showing a completely destroyed structure in a remote area, matching a video of the site published by Hamshahri Online. Zoomit.ir carried five other photographs of the site, both before and after the attack.
Where sources identified a belligerent, they attributed strikes to the United States military. CENTCOM confirmed several strikes on Iran on this date through an announcement via its Twitter/X account, but did not specifically identify this strike. Due to several videos taken at different times of the site, and multiple independent reports of civilian harm, this has been graded a ‘likely strike’ and ‘fair’ according to Airwars grading standards.