A UN fact-finding mission concluded that the US intentionally targeted a school building in Iran that was struck on the opening day of the war, rejecting the possibility that the school was accidentally hit during an attack on a neighboring Iranian military facility. The investigators found reasonable grounds to believe the attack constituted a war crime.
“Based on the available evidence,” a report from the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran said, adding, “The Mission finds reasonable grounds to believe that the US committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack resulting in loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.”
The fact-finding mission was looking into human rights abuses in Iran, including the Minab school bombing. On the opening day of the war, the school was hit by multiple Tomahawk missiles, killing more than 150 people, most of them children.
The report argues the Minab school bombing amounted to a war crime because the US intentionally targeted the building, and did not engage in thorough target verification to know it currently operated as a school. It described the failure to identify the school as “beyond mere negligence.”
“Credible civil society organizations concurred that the available evidence pointed to US responsibility and that failures in target verification, including reliance on outdated intelligence, were the most likely explanation for the strike on the school,” the report explains. Furthermore, “The Mission concluded that when targeting the school building, the US acted wilfully, that is with the requisite mental element of recklessness.”
President Donald Trump initially blamed Iran for the school bombing without providing evidence. He later suggested Iran possessed Tomahawk missiles, although Iran is not known to have the weapon.
A Department of War investigation would later admit the US attack was correlated with US strikes on Iranian military sites nearby, although the US investigation has not been made public.
The UN fact-finding mission also looked into a strike on a sports hall in Lamerd, Iran. The report says the team found “grounds to believe that the munitions used in the airstrike on and around the sports hall in Lamerd were PrSM missiles.”
22 people were killed in the attack, including five children. The fact-finding mission also found the Lamerd strike amounted to the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack. The US denies it conducted the strike.
