UN investigators find 'reasonable grounds' US committed war crimes in Iran
The United Nations has “reasonable grounds” to believe the US committed a war crime with its strikes on the Minab elementary school and a sports centre in the opening days of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The US attack on the Minab school killed at least 150 people, including approximately 120 children. Another strike hit a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern Iranian city of Lamerd.
“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,” a UN fact-finding mission wrote in a report released on Thursday.
The report is not a judicial ruling, but has been submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The UN investigators noted that the Minab school was struck by a Tomahawk missile as part of ongoing strikes on an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base. The researchers noted that the strike was not due to an errant missile.
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“The nearest IRGC facility [was] located approximately 72 metres from the school building,” the authors said.
“The Mission concludes that the building of the school was the intended point of impact and that the damage did not result from an errant strike or collateral damage from the attack on the adjacent IRGC compound,” the report said.
The New York Times reported that officers at US Central Command had created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, citing people briefed on the investigation.
The US investigators probing the attack said the US military was most likely responsible for the strike, but the Trump administration has deflected any responsibility.
The UN fact-finders said another US strike hit a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern Iranian city of Lamerd.
The New York Times revealed in March that the US used a previously untested ballistic missile in combat to attack the sports hall. The Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, detonates just above its target, launching thousands of tungsten pellets.
“The Mission concluded that the US by choosing to use the PrSM missile in a populated civilian area, under the prevailing circumstances, launched an attack that struck civilians and civilian objects reckless as to the likely extent of death or injury,” UN fact-finders said.
The UN said that the US’s attacks were “indiscriminate” and violated “the principle of distinction” in international humanitarian law.
The report noted that the US used a weapons system that distributed approximately 180,000 tungsten pellets in an area with many civilians. The attack “could not be directed at a specific military objective and its effects on civilian and civilian objects could not be limited,” the UN researchers said.
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