Deadly US strike on Iran school may have been a war crime, UN report finds
UN inquiry raises war-crime concerns over deadly strikes in southern Iran
Qwenews.com – A United Nations fact-finding mission has concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe two US attacks in southern Iran at the start of the war may have violated the laws of war, including a February 28 strike on an elementary school in Minab that killed at least 156 people.
Iranian officials said 120 children and 26 teachers were among those killed at the Shajareh Tayyiba school. Although casualty totals have varied slightly, the incident could rank among the gravest civilian-loss events involving the US military in recent history.
“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.”
The finding came from the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission, whose investigators examined the Minab strike as well as another attack that day on a sports center and nearby homes in Lamerd. The Lamerd attack killed 22 civilians, the mission said.
Questions over the school strike
The school was located beside an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base. Preliminary information from a continuing US internal inquiry indicates that outdated intelligence may have helped cause the attack to hit the school while the military was targeting the neighboring base.
Two people briefed on the early findings said US Central Command produced target coordinates using old material supplied by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Satellite images from 2013 showed the school and the IRGC installation as part of one compound. By 2016, imagery showed a fence separating the school from the rest of the site, along with a distinct entrance for the school.
Images from December 2025 appeared to show dozens of people using the school courtyard. The UN inquiry said it found no indication that the school was being used for military activity when it was struck.
“The US failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify that it was a military objective.”
Under the laws governing armed conflict, military forces must distinguish between lawful military targets and civilian people or sites. Schools are civilian objects unless they are being used in a way that makes them a military objective. Parties to a conflict also have an obligation to take feasible steps to verify targets and reduce expected harm to civilians.
The UN mission’s assessment does not itself amount to a criminal conviction. Its purpose is to document alleged violations, preserve evidence and present findings to the UN Human Rights Council. The investigators said their work drew on satellite imagery, videos, photographs, information from credible organizations and specialists, and dozens of interviews conducted inside and outside Iran.
US response and unfinished review
A State Department official rejected the credibility of the UN report on behalf of the Trump administration. The official pointed to President Donald Trump’s February 2025 decision to withdraw the United States from the UN Human Rights Council, which he had accused of antisemitism.
The Defense Department declined detailed comment, saying an investigation remained underway and that it had no announcement to make. The United States has not released the results of its own review.
Trump initially suggested that Iran could bear responsibility for the school strike. When challenged over the lack of public support for that claim from within his administration, he said:
“Because I just don’t know enough about it.”
The internal Pentagon investigation has remained unresolved for months. The absence of a published US account has left central questions unanswered, including what intelligence was available before the strike, whether warnings about its age were raised, and how the school was identified in the target-planning process.
Broader inquiry into abuses in Iran
The UN report also examined Iran’s treatment of anti-government demonstrators in late 2025 and early 2026, before the war with the United States began. Investigators said a violent crackdown killed thousands of people and involved torture and enforced disappearances of detainees whose families were not informed of their fate.
“Gross violations amount to crimes against humanity.”
The mission described the repression as a widespread and systematic assault on civilians. Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was approached for comment.
Investigators said Iranian authorities did not grant them unrestricted access to the country. Iran responded to only about one-quarter of the mission’s information requests, the report stated. Requests for meetings with US officials and for information from Israel also received no response.
Although the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, it has domestic laws addressing war crimes. The UN findings place renewed attention on whether the Minab and Lamerd strikes complied with US obligations under international humanitarian law, as well as on the need for a transparent outcome from the Pentagon’s still-pending review.
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