A United Nations fact-finding mission on Iran has found reasonable grounds to believe that the US military was responsible for two strikes on civilian
sites in Iran in February and that the attacks constituted war crimes. The mission examined a strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, where Iranian officials said more than 150 people were killed, including around 120 schoolchildren. According to the mission, US forces had intelligence suggesting that a senior Iranian military commander was at the location. However, investigators said the intelligence was not adequately verified before the strike and that targeting information was not sufficiently updated to establish that the building had become a legitimate military objective. Moreover, the school was clearly identifiable as a civilian object and found no evidence that it was being used for military purposes.
Minab School Strike Under UN Scrutiny
The mission concluded that the attack amounted to an indiscriminate strike that caused civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure. It said the circumstances went beyond mere negligence, finding that the US acted recklessly despite a substantial risk of striking a civilian object.
The findings add another layer to scrutiny of the February attack, for which US President Donald Trump said in June that “nobody” had deliberately targeted a girls' school. Trump cited an investigation into the incident at the time.
Reuters had previously reported that an initial internal US military investigation indicated US forces were likely responsible for the fatal strike in Minab. The Pentagon subsequently elevated its investigation but has not publicly released preliminary findings, according to the Reuters report.
The mission also examined a separate strike on a sports centre in Lamerd. It said the attack damaged nearby residential buildings and a school and resulted in 22 civilian deaths and injuries.
UN investigators concluded that the Lamerd strike was indiscriminate and therefore constituted a war crime. US Central Command had said in March that American forces did not carry out any strikes inside the city of Lamerd on that day.
UN Probe Accuses Iranian Authorities Of Crimes Against Humanity
The same fact-finding mission separately accused Iranian authorities of committing crimes against humanity during the government's response to anti-government protests that began in late December. The investigation identified what it described as a widespread and systematic attack against civilians. The alleged abuses included unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and severe restrictions on freedom of expression.
The protests triggered one of Iran's largest crackdowns since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in the 1979 revolution. Rights groups have said that bystanders were among those killed, while Iranian authorities have blamed what they described as terrorists and rioters backed by foreign opponents, including the United States and Israel.
The UN mission said it could not independently verify the overall death toll. However, it assessed that the number of people killed and injured was likely significantly higher than Iran's official figures of 3,038 deaths and 25,000 injuries.
