UN human rights experts have said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran that killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children.
The findings by the international fact-finding mission on Iran relate to an airstrike on a school in Minab and a separate attack on a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd, both on 28 February.
In a statement, the mission said it had found reasonable grounds to believe the US was responsible for “launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects” following US and Israeli attacks.
At least one US missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province. Iranian state media reported that 168 people were killed, most of them children.
The US was “likely” responsible for the bombing, according to a preliminary US assessment cited in March, although the strike was not believed to have intentionally targeted the school. It may have hit the building by mistake after outdated intelligence wrongly identified the area as still being part of an Iranian military installation.
The second incident involved precision-strike missiles that scattered tungsten pellets over what the mission described as a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in Lamerd.
There was no immediate response from the White House or the US military to the claim. US Central Command has repeatedly rejected similar accusations from Iran, saying American forces do not target civilians and accusing Iranian forces of doing so regularly.
The UN mission also said killings by Iranian state security forces had taken place on a “staggering scale” in Iran.
