Mourinho the center of attention on losing return to Stamford Bridge

Jose Mourinho blew a kiss to Chelsea fans chanting his name. He pleaded with Benfica fans to stop throwing objects at a player. He even jogged onto the field to remove an errant ball.

The man once nicknamed the “Special One” was the center of attention on his return to Stamford Bridge on Tuesday.

He didn't leave with a win, though.

Taking charge of his first Champions League game in five years, Mourinho saw his Benfica team put up a good fight in losing 1-0 at Chelsea, the English club where he had two spells — from 2004-07 and 2013-15 — and established himself as one of coaching greats of his generation.

Mourinho's status may be diminished nowadays but he is still revered in this part of southwest London, and Chelsea fans gave him warm welcome as he belatedly emerged from the tunnel just before kickoff, having exchanged exchanged pleasantries with Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca.

Wearing a white shirt under a dark coat, Mourinho was soon responding to Chelsea fans' chants of “Jose Mourinho, Jose Mourinho” by waving to them and blowing a kiss.

“Of course I was focused on the game,” Mourinho said, “but you have always a little bit of the sound (of the crowd), and of course I thanked them."

Toward the end of the first half, Mourinho left his technical area, walked down the touchline and gestured to the traveling Benfica fans to stop throwing items at Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez as the Argentina midfielder took a corner. Fernandez left Benfica for Chelsea in February 2023 for a then-British-record transfer fee of 106.7 million pounds ($131.4 million).

Near the end, as Benfica pushed for an equalizer, a stray ball got onto the pitch from the sideline and Mourinho chose to run on the playing surface and take it away. That got some applause from the home fans, too.

“When I am in London, I meet them every day on the street," he said of Chelsea's fans. "I know that is going to be a relationship forever. Hopefully I come back here in 20 years with my grandkids. They belong to my history and I belong to their history.”

When the final whistle went, Mourinho gave Maresca a hug and disappeared quickly down the tunnel, clearly disappointed to have lost and choosing not to engage more with the Chelsea supporters.

“My career took me to a position where everybody thinks I have magic to make things happen,” Mourinho said, adding: “With me, it's never enough. If I am in the job, it's because I like to put myself on the line every day. I am desperate to win the next match, that's my nature.”

Speaking Monday upon his return to Stamford Bridge, he said he would “always be a Blue.”

Mourinho recently took charge of Benfica after leaving Fenerbahce in Turkey. That meant he is back in the Champions League, a competition he won with Porto in 2004 and Inter Milan in 2010.

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Benfica's head coach Jose Mourinho reacts during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Chelsea and SL Benfica at Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Benfica's head coach Jose Mourinho embraces former Chelsea player Joe Cole after giving an interview on the pitch ahead of a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Chelsea and SL Benfica at Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Benfica'a head coach Jose Mourinho walks to the stadium ahead of the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Chelsea and Benfica at Stamford Bridge, London, Tuesday Sept. 30, 2025. (Bradley Collyer/PA via AP)

Benfica's head coach Jose Mourinho gestures during a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Chelsea and SL Benfica at Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Benfica's head coach Jose Mourinho gives an interview on the pitch ahead of a Champions League opening phase soccer match between Chelsea and SL Benfica at Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Outdated intelligence likely led to the United States carrying out a deadly missile strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed over 165 people, many of them children, in the opening hours of the conflict, according to a U.S. official and a second person briefed on findings of a preliminary U.S military investigation into the incident.

The bombing of the school and its casualties involving children has become a focal point of the war, and if ultimately confirmed to be at the hands of the U.S., would also stand among the highest civilian casualty events caused by the American military operations in the last two decades.

President Donald Trump initially blamed Iran for the attack, later said he wasn’t certain who was to blame, and then said he would accept the results of the Pentagon’s investigation. The issue took on added urgency on Wednesday after the New York Times first reported that a preliminary investigation found that the U.S. was responsible.

U.S. Central Command relied on target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the person familiar with the preliminary finding.

The agency did not respond to a request for comment.

The preliminary finding prompted immediate calls for more information from the Pentagon. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the investigation is still ongoing.”

Both the U.S. official and the person familiar with the matter spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Dozens of Democratic senators demanded answers from the Trump administration on Wednesday as a growing body of evidence suggested that the U.S. was likely responsible for the strike.

The letter from more than 45 senators pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on whether the U.S. was culpable for the strike and what previous analysis of the building had been done. The senators also raised concerns about the Pentagon hollowing-out a congressionally mandated office set up specifically to reduce civilian casualties.

“Under this administration, budgetary and personnel cuts at the Department have robbed military commands of crucial resources to prevent and respond to civilian casualties,” the senators wrote. Those include cuts at U.S. Central Command, whose forces are leading the military campaign against Iran, and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was signed into law in 2022 as part of a Pentagon ambition to reduce death tolls from strikes.

The revelation could threaten to erode public support in the U.S. effort against Iran at a time when Trump, who as a candidate railed against American involvement in “stupid” overseas wars, faces persistent questions about the purpose and of the conflict and what would bring it to an end.

One former Pentagon official said the Feb. 28 strike that hit Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, which is located near a neighboring base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, came as a natural result of changes made by the Trump administration to reduce staff to mitigate civilian harm and Hegseth’s emphasis on lethality over legality.

There are several indications that the strike on the school may have been avoidable.

It happened Saturday morning, the start of the Iranian school week, when the building was full of young children. Satellite analysis by the AP shows that the school, as well as other targets struck the same day, had characteristics visible from the air that could have identified them as civilian sites before they were struck.

The AP reported last week that satellite images, expert analysis, a U.S. official and public information released by the U.S. military all suggested it was likely a U.S. strike. That evidence grew stronger on Monday, as new footage emerged showing what experts identified as a U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile slamming into the military compound as smoke was already rising from the area where the school was located.

Publicly available satellite imagery shows the school building was part of the military compound until about 2017, when a new wall was added to separate the two. A watchtower on the property was also removed. Around the same time, the imagery shows the walls surrounding the building were painted with murals in vibrant colors, primarily blue and pink, so bright they're visible from space

The school was clearly labeled as such in online maps and has an easily-accessible website full of information about students, teachers and administrators.

International law governing warfare bars strikes on structures, vehicles and people that are not military objectives and combatants. Civilian homes, schools, medical facilities and cultural sites are generally off limits for military strikes. The proximity of a school to a valid military target does not change its status as a civilian site, said Elise Baker, a senior staff lawyer at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based nonprofit think tank.

If the U.S. is found responsible, said Sen. Tim Kaine during a briefing with journalists on Wednesday: “It’s either we’ve changed our traditional targeting rules or we made a mistake.”

“If we’ve changed our traditional targeting rules and we no longer provide the same level of protection for civilians, that would be tragic,” Kaine said.

Some Republicans, too, are sounding alarms.

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told reporters that an investigation needs to “get to the bottom of it,” and then “admit if you know whose fault it is.”

If the U.S. was behind it, Cramer said, the military must “do everything you can to eliminate those mistakes going forward.”

He added: “But you also can’t undo it.”

Congress directed the Pentagon to create the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence in late 2022 as part of the wide-ranging annual defense authorization bill, which passed both chambers with broad bipartisan support. The bill said the center was to “institutionalize and advance knowledge, practices, and tools for preventing, mitigating, and responding to civilian harm.”

The measure put into law an initiative that had already been started by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier that year. The 36-step action plan was “ambitious and necessary,” Austin said at the time.

In April 2023, that office had a full-time director hired by the Army and an initial core staff of 30 civilians, according to a 2024 Pentagon report that said that the workforce was expected to grow.

Wes Bryant began working there in 2024 as the Branch Chief of Civil Harm Assessments. One of the things the office was discussing was updating the “no-strike lists,” lists of protected sites in other countries, such as hospitals, schools, churches and mosques, that the Pentagon keeps. When he was working at the Pentagon, it was well known that the list was out-of-date, he said. But under Hegseth, the office's size was slashed and the work on updating the no-strike lists stopped, he said.

“They have no budget. They're just sitting there trying to maintain any semblance of the mission,” he said.

Capt. Tim Hawkins, the spokesman for U.S. Central Command, denied reports that the military command only had a single person assigned to the mission but would not offer any further details, citing the ongoing investigation.

This story was first published on March 11, 2026. It was published again on March 12, 2026, to make clear that no-strike lists are lists of protected sites in other countries, such as hospitals, schools, churches and mosques, that the Pentagon keeps.

Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Konstantin Toropin and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.

The arm of a deceased person is seen protruding from the rubble as rescue workers and residents search in the aftermath a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)

Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)

Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)

Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)

Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)