File photo: U.S. Marines disassemble a BLU-91/B anti-tank mine during a training exercise on Oct. 21, 2020. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Laiqa Hitt

The U.S. may have dropped anti-tank mines over a village in southern Iran, the open-source research group Bellingcat reported Thursday, as images posted on social media appeared to show American BLU-91/B scatterable anti-tank landmines in the southern suburbs of Shiraz.

Iranian state media reported that "explosive packages" slightly larger than tuna cans had been dropped by aircraft over the area, and that some had exploded after being handled.

Several people were killed by the devices, Iranian state TV said, and it urged members of the public to report the items' locations to authorities and not touch them.

CBS News was unable to independently verify the images, and U.S. Central Command declined to comment when asked if the U.S. had deployed the munitions.

Bellingcat cited three independent weapons experts as saying the munitions shown by Iranian state media appeared to be BLU-91/B mines, which are delivered by American Gator anti-tank mine systems. It noted that the U.S. is the only party in the Iran war known to have Gator Scatterable Mines, the system that uses the BLU-91/B devices.

BLU-91/B anti-tank mines are designed to be triggered by a large vehicle driving by and disrupting the mine's magnetic field, Richard Weir, a senior adviser in the Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, told CBS News.

Weir warned, however, that the mines could be detonated by other types of vehicles, and they have a self-destruct setting which could mean they explode hours or even days after being dropped.

"So there's a number of different things about this mine that make it very dangerous for people who may come across it, anybody who comes across it, including the fact that it could just spontaneously detonate for anybody who's nearby that doesn't know it's present," Weir said.

The BLU-91/B mines are anti-vehicle mines, as opposed to anti-personnel mines, which are banned under the U.N. Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction. Over 100 countries are signatories of that convention, though the U.S. is not.

Anti-personnel mines "are typically smaller," Weir said, explaining, "they are devices that are triggered by an individual, by their presence or their proximity to the weapon."

"Anti-tank and anti-vehicle mines aren't covered as part of the treaty itself, but they do present similar risks, because they don't discriminate between their target," he said.

The U.S. hasn't used anti-tank mines in any meaningful way since the first Gulf War in 1991, Weir said, and it hasn't used anti-personnel mines since 2002 in Afghanistan.

"This is something that is very rare," Weir told CBS News. "And so the consequences of this are almost invariably more civilian harm. And these are the kinds of things, their effects for affected communities extend not just for days or even months but oftentimes for many, many years."

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