UN-backed experts cite possible US war crimes in Iran strikes

Geneva : Human rights experts commissioned by the UN’s top rights body say they have found “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran, including on a school in the southern city of Minab .

The international fact-finding mission on Iran says the findings centre on a pair of airstrikes that killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children.

The team also said killings by state security forces occurred on a “staggering scale” in Iran.

It said civilians were caught between “gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by their own government and the nation’s deadly conflict with the United States and Israel”.

At the start of the Iran war in February, at least one US missile hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, according to an Associated Press investigation.

Iranian state media have said 168 people were killed in the strike, most of them children.