UN experts say grounds to believe US committed war crimes in Iran strikes

UN human rights experts say there are reasonable grounds to believe the US committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran that killed at least 177 civilians.

A new report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran , external said February's missile strikes on a primary school in Minab and a sports complex in Lamerd constituted indiscriminate attacks causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure.

The US previously denied striking Lamerd and said it was investigating what happened in Minab. A State Department official said the US did not give credibility to the findings in the report.

The experts also found Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during a crackdown on mass anti-government protests in January.

They said killings by security forces occurred on "a staggering and unprecedented scale" across all 31 provinces.

A State Department official said the protection of civilians was of the utmost importance to the US. They added that they did not give credibility to the report's findings.

Iran has also not yet commented on the findings, but it has previously rejected allegations of systematic violations of human rights.

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"Civilians in Iran are 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," the fact-finding mission warned in a statement on Thursday.

For their latest report to the UN Human Rights Council, the mission's three independent experts investigated two of the deadliest attacks on civilians during the conflict.

On 28 February, when the US and Israel launched their war against Iran, Tomahawk missiles struck Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the southern town of Minab, killing at least 156 people, including 120 children, according to local authorities.

The fact-finding mission's experts said the school was adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval complex also attacked that day, but that the school was clearly identifiable and that no information indicated that it was used for military purposes.