UN experts say grounds to believe US committed war crimes in Iran strikes

BBC:

UN human rights experts say there are reasonable grounds to believe the US committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran that killed at least 177 civilians.

A new report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said February’s missile strikes on a primary school in Minab and a sports complex in Lamerd constituted indiscriminate attacks causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure.

The US previously denied striking Lamerd and said it was investigating what happened in Minab. A State Department official said the US did not give credibility to the findings in the report.

The experts also found Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during a crackdown on mass anti-government protests in January.

They said killings by security forces occurred on “a staggering and unprecedented scale” across all 31 provinces.

Iran has also not yet commented on the findings, but it has previously rejected allegations of systematic violations of human rights.

“Civilians in Iran are caught between gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by their own government and the nation’s deadly conflict with the United States and Israel,” the fact-finding mission warned in a statement on Thursday.