UN experts find reasonable grounds that US strikes on Iran school and sports facility were war crimes

A fact-finding mission commissioned by the United Nations said it 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, and that the attacks constituted war crimes. The panel’s findings were announced in a statement carried by Mehr News Agency.

The mission identified the first incident as a February 28 Tomahawk missile strike on an elementary school in the southern city of Minab. According to the panel, the school was “clearly identifiable” at the time of the attack. The second incident was a separate air strike in which precision strike missiles scattered tungsten pellets over what the mission described as a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd.

In its statement, the fact-finding mission said: “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 panel did not provide further details in the statement on the number of casualties or the extent of the damage in either location.

The findings were issued by human rights experts working under a UN mandate. The mission’s conclusion that the strikes amounted to war crimes is based on its assessment that the targets were identifiable civilian objects and that the attacks were indiscriminate. The statement referred to both US and Israeli attacks on February 28, but the specific finding of war crimes was directed at the United States.

The report did not specify whether the panel had access to the sites or how it verified the type of munitions used. It also did not indicate whether the findings would be referred to any international judicial body. The UN-backed mission’s statement was distributed by Mehr News Agency, which reported the panel’s conclusion that there were reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes in the two strikes.

According to Mehr News Agency, the fact-finding mission said the February 28 attacks included the strike on the elementary school in Minab and the air strike on the sports complex and residential area in Lamerd. The mission’s statement added that it found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in civilian loss of life or injury or damage to civilian objects.