U.S. strike on Iranian school may be war crime, U.N. panel says

A group of United Nations-backed experts has found “reasonable grounds” to believe that U.S. forces committed war crimes during the conflict against Iran, pointing to two airstrikes including one that hit a primary school in Minab, killing around 150 civilians.

In a report submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, an independent fact-finding mission on Iran “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 team, which submitted its report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, examined two strikes including a Tomahawk cruise missile strike in late February on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, which killed more than 150 people. It also examined a separate strike that dispersed clouds of tungsten pellets over a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd, killing 22 people.

The mission, which was commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body, also blamed the Iranian government for “gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity,” including in recent violent crackdowns on Iranian protesters.

“The U.N. Human Rights Council has accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime, which has murdered thousands of its own people, killed Americans overseas, executed acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and launched indiscriminate attacks against its neighbors in the region.”

The Pentagon has previously said the incident was under investigation. On Thursday, a Pentagon official said the investigation remains ongoing and that the department would not comment on a report from an outside organization.

Even though the 18-page report is not binding, it adds to a growing body of evidence that could eventually be used to pursue accountability in international courts.

The missile strike on the school in Minab represents the worst incident of civilian harm resulting from U.S. operations in decades.

In June, Bloomberg News reported that investigators were examining missteps that resulted in the strike on Minab, including U.S. intelligence systems that weren’t connected to each other and missed remarks from a U.S. intelligence analyst who had previously pointed out that a former military facility was now operating as an elementary school.