UN-backed experts cite possible US war crimes in Iran strikes
UN-backed human rights experts said Thursday they had found “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States committed war crimes in two airstrikes in Iran, including one that hit a school in the southern city of Minab.
The International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said the findings concerned two strikes that killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children.
At the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran in February, at least one US missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, according to an Associated Press investigation. Iranian state media reported that 168 people were killed, most of them children, though there has been no final accounting of the casualties.
“Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” the fact-finding team said in a statement.
The Trump administration has not directly accepted responsibility for the school strike or released the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the bombing.
The fact-finding team also cited a separate strike in Lamerd, southern Iran, where it said precision missiles dispersed tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area”. It said 22 civilian men and women were killed in the attack.
US Central Command has denied responsibility for the Lamerd strike.
The team said its findings on the two attacks involved Tomahawk missiles striking the “clearly identifiable” school and the Lamerd strike, both on February 28.
The experts also reported that killings by Iranian state security forces occurred on a “staggering scale” and alleged that the Iranian government had committed crimes against humanity.
Civilians in Iran were caught between “gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by their own government and the nation's deadly conflict with the United States and Israel”, the mission said.
The International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, chaired by Bangladeshi jurist Sara Hossain, comprises independent experts. It was established in 2022 by the UN Human Rights Council.
