UN-backed experts find grounds to suspect US war crimes in Iran strikes

Human rights experts appointed by the United Nations' leading human rights body have said they found "reasonable grounds" to believe the United States committed war crimes in two airstrikes in Iran, one of which hit a school in the southern city of Minab.

The international fact-finding mission on Iran said its conclusions relate to a pair of strikes that killed at least 178 civilians, among them women and children.

In a statement, the team said that after the attacks by the United States and Israel on 28 February, it found reasonable grounds to believe Washington had committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks that resulted in loss of life or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects.

The mission also reported that killings by state security forces in Iran had taken place on a "staggering scale." It said civilians were trapped between grave human rights violations and crimes against humanity attributed to their own government, and the country's deadly conflict with the United States and Israel.

At the outset of the war in February, at least one US missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh in Minab. No final accounting of the incident has been issued. Iranian state media have said 168 people were killed in the strike, most of them children.