UN-backed experts cite possible US war crimes in Iran strikes

GENEVA (AP) — Human rights experts commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body say they have found “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran, including on a school in the southern city of Minab.

The international fact-finding mission on Iran says the findings center on a pair of airstrikes that killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children.

At the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran in February, at least one U.S. missile hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, according to an Associated Press investigation. There has been no final accounting of what happened. Iranian state media have said 168 people were killed in the strike, most of them children.

“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 yet to directly accept the blame or release findings of a Pentagon investigation into the school bombing.

The U.N.-backed team cited the allegations of war crimes over two strikes — one involving Tomahawk missiles on the “clearly identifiable” school, and another airstrike where precision strike missiles dispersed tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd, also on Feb. 28.

The U.N.-backed team said 22 civilian men and women were killed. U.S. Central Command has denied responsibility for the strike on Lamerd.

The team also said that killings by state security forces occurred on a “staggering scale” in Iran, and alleged crimes against humanity committed by the Iranian government.

It said civilians 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 fact-finding mission on Iran, chaired by jurist Sara Hossain of Bangladesh, is made of of independent experts and was created in 2022 by the Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s top human rights body.

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