NewzUN human rights experts say there are reasonable grounds to believe the US committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran that killed at least 177 civilians. A new report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said February’s missile strikes on a primary school in Minab and a sports complex in Lamerd constituted indiscriminate attacks causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure. There was no immediate comment from the US.
It has previously denied striking Lamerd and said it is investigating what happened in Minab. The experts also found Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during a crackdown on mass anti-government protests in January. They said killings by security forces occurred on “a staggering and unprecedented scale” across all 31 provinces.
Iran has also not yet commented on the findings, but it has previously rejected allegations of systematic violations of human rights. “Civilians in Iran are 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 warned in a statement on Thursday. For their latest report to the UN Human Rights Council, the mission’s three independent experts investigated two of the deadliest attacks on civilians during the conflict.
On 28 February, when the US and Israel launched their war against Iran, Tomahawk missiles struck Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the southern town of Minab, killing at least 156 people, including 120 children, according to local authorities. The fact-finding mission’s experts said the school was adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval complex also attacked that day, but that the school was clearly identifiable and that no information indicated that it was used for military purposes. The experts said that, based on the evidence gathered – including media reports indicating that a preliminary US military inquiry found US forces responsible, and the fact that the US is the only party to the conflict that possesses Tomahawk missiles – they had reasonable grounds to believe that the strike on the school was carried out by the US.
They also concluded that the school was “the intended point of impact and that the damage did not result from an errant strike or collateral damage” from the … may have committed war crimes in two airstrikes in Iran, including a mass-casualty strike on a school for which Washington has yet to claim responsibility, a UN fact-finding mission said Thursday. The big picture: The administration has waged a campaign of aggressive, norm-busting war-fighting, with the president repeatedly threatening to hit civilian infrastructure in his pressure campaign on Tehran.
The president has shrugged off questions about his attacks on Iran and previously said he wasn't concerned if his threats could amount to war crimes.The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to Axios' request to respond to the UN team's findings.What's inside: The UN mission found "reasonable grounds to believe" the U.S. 28 strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in southern Iran that reportedly killed more than 120 children. Brad Cooper told the House Armed Services Committee the Minab attack "correlated" with a U.S.
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