UN finds US strikes on Iranian school, sports centre amounted to war crimes
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Geneva: A UN fact-finding mission on Iran has found reasonable grounds to believe that the United States was responsible for two military strikes on a school and a sports facility in Iran in February, concluding that the attacks constituted war crimes.
The independent international fact-finding mission, whose findings are due to be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, also found that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.
The investigation examined US military conduct during the Iran war that began in February, as well as the Iranian government's response to nationwide unrest that erupted in late December.
US officials have previously said that American military operations are conducted in accordance with the law of armed conflict, while Iranian authorities have consistently rejected allegations of systematic human rights violations.
The UN experts found reasonable grounds to believe that US forces were responsible for a strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, where more than 150 people, including around 120 schoolchildren, were killed, according to Iranian officials.
The mission concluded that the attack amounted to an indiscriminate strike that caused civilian deaths and damaged civilian infrastructure, constituting a war crime under international law.
According to the report, US forces had intelligence indicating that a senior Iranian military commander was present at the site but failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike.
Investigators said the failure to update targeting intelligence and establish whether the building was a military objective went beyond mere negligence. They concluded that the US directed the strike at the school while aware of a substantial risk of hitting a civilian object and acted recklessly regarding that possibility.
In June, US President Donald Trump said that "nobody" had deliberately attacked a girls' school in Iran in February, citing an investigation into the incident. Reuters had earlier reported that an initial US military investigation indicated that American forces were probably responsible for the fatal strike in Minab.
The Pentagon has since elevated the inquiry but has not released its preliminary findings.
The UN experts said the school was a clearly identifiable civilian object and found no evidence that it was being used for military purposes.
The mission reached a similar conclusion regarding a strike on a sports centre in Lamerd. According to the report, the attack damaged nearby residential buildings and a school and killed and injured 22 civilians. The mission concluded that the strike was indiscriminate and therefore constituted a war crime.
US Central Command said in a statement in March that US forces had not conducted any strikes in the city of Lamerd on that day.
The UN mission also found that Iranian authorities carried out a widespread and systematic attack against civilians during protests that erupted in late December. The crackdown allegedly involved unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and severe restrictions on freedom of expression.
Rights groups have said that bystanders were among those killed in what they described as the biggest crackdown since Shia Muslim clerics came to power in the 1979 revolution. Tehran, however, blamed "terrorists and rioters" backed by exiled opponents and foreign adversaries, including the US and Israel.
The investigation said it could not independently verify the death toll but concluded that the number of people killed and injured was probably far higher than official figures, which put the toll at 3,038 deaths and 25,000 injuries.
The report said the government's response to the protests, including violence and killings, an internet shutdown and the use of the death penalty, represented a significant escalation from previous patterns of suppressing dissent.
