U.S. Strike on Iranian School May Have Been War Crime, U.N. Report Says

United Nations investigators said Thursday that there were reasonable grounds to conclude that two U.S. airstrikes on Iran in February in which at least 178 civilians died had been indiscriminate and amounted to war crimes. The first of the attacks hit the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school on Feb. 28 and killed 157 people, including around 123 boys and girls below the age of 13, the investigators said. They cited what they described as credible independent information. The second strike took place the same day and hit a sports center and nearby residential buildings in the central city of Lamerd. Iranian sources reported that 22 civilians were killed, including five children, the investigators said. They said a “credible organization” reported that close to 170 people were injured, among them children who sustained life-threatening injuries. The findings were contained in an 18-page report by the U.N.’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran and are to be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday. The report also details abuses it said amounted to crimes against humanity that were committed by the Iranian authorities in their crackdown on government protesters. Addressing the strike on the elementary school in Minab, a town in southern Iran, the report said: “The mission finds reasonable grounds to believe that the U.S. committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack resulting in loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in . Want all of The Times? Subscribe .