United Nations investigators said Thursday there were reasonable grounds to conclude that two U.S. airstrikes against Iran in February, which killed at least 178 civilians, had been indiscriminate and constituted war crimes. The first of the attacks hit Shajarah Tayyebeh Primary School on February 28, killing 157 people, including around 123 boys and girls under the age of 13, investigators said. They cited what they described as credible independent information. The second attack took place on the same day and hit a sports center and nearby residential buildings in the central town of Lamerd. Iranian sources reported that 22 civilians were killed, including five children, investigators said. They said a “credible organization” reported that nearly 170 people were injured, including children who suffered life-threatening injuries. The findings were contained in an 18-page report by the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran and will be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday. The report also detailed abuses that it said amounted to crimes against humanity that were committed by Iranian authorities in their crackdown on government protesters. Referring to the attack on the primary school in Minab, a city in southern Iran, the report said: “The mission finds reasonable grounds to believe that the United States committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack that resulted in loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian property.” “The Department declines to comment on a report by an outside organization,” the Defense Department said in a statement. “Our investigation is ongoing and we have nothing to announce at this time.” US officials have attributed the attack on the school to a targeting error caused by outdated data. The school was hit during an attack on a nearby Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval complex, but UN investigators said it was clearly identifiable as a school. They also concluded that the location had been “the intended point of impact” and had not been hit by an errant blow. They also said it was not collateral damage. The mission noted that a preliminary Defense Department investigation had acknowledged that the United States was likely responsible. The Pentagon has not released the results of its investigation. “No one did it on purpose,” President Trump told reporters in June. “Mistakes are made. War is unpleasant.” the report said. He said U.S. forces had used a precision strike missile that dispersed approximately 180,000 tungsten pellets over a wide area. The use of the weapon in a populated civilian area was “reckless in terms of the likely extent of death or injury,” he said. In reaching their conclusions, the researchers said they had taken into account public statements by U.S. officials, including Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, that dismissed U.S. obligations under international law to distinguish between civilians and the military. goals. Investigators said they had written to the US government requesting information about the airstrikes and meetings with US military officials. They received no response, they said. Investigators said they had also looked into Iran’s brutal treatment of protesters in the period before the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran. In December 2025 and early this year, the report said, the Iranian government engaged in the murder of dissidents “on a staggering and unprecedented scale” across all of Iran’s 31 provinces. The report noted official estimates that 3,038 people had died in the violence and some 25,000 had been injured, many of them seriously. But investigators said they firmly believed the actual number of people killed and injured was significantly higher. In the crackdown that followed, Iranian security forces arrested thousands of people. And since the beginning of the year, the government has executed at least 58 people on security-related charges, according to the report. More than 70 Iranians, including at least five women and three children, remain at imminent risk of being sentenced to death or executed over the protests, according to the report. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
