UN-mandated human rights experts say they have found “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States committed war crimes in two attacks in Iran, including one on a school in the southern city of Minab. The international fact-finding mission on Iran says the findings center on a pair of airstrikes that killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children. “indiscriminate attacks resulting in loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian property,” the investigation team said in a statement. The team also said that killings by Iranian state security forces occurred on a “staggering scale” in Iran. At the start of the war in February, at least one US missile hit Shajareh Tayyebeh in Minab, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. Iranian state media has said 168 people were killed in the attack, most of them children. Women stand near the building of the destroyed Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in Iran’s Hormozgan province, on August 10, 2026. ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty The United States was “probably” responsible for the bombing, sources told CBS News in March, citing a preliminary US assessment, but it did not intentionally target the school and may have hit it by mistake, possibly due to the use of dated intelligence that misidentified the area as still part of an Iranian military installation. The other incident cited by UN rights experts was an attack with precision strike missiles that scattered tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd, also on February 28. There was no immediate reaction from the White House or the US military on Thursday to the claim of possible war crimes, but Central Command has repeatedly rejected such accusations by Iran and said the US military never attacks civilians, which it accuses Iranian forces of doing. regularly. CBS/AP
