GENEVA — A UN fact-finding mission said on Thursday that it has found “reasonable grounds” to believe the US was behind two military strikes in Iran in February, which it says constituted war crimes.It also found that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during their deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran examined the US conduct during the Iran war that began in February and the Iranian government’s response to nationwide unrest that began in late December.Its findings are to be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.The UN-backed panel identified the attacks as a Tomahawk missile strike on a “clearly identifiable” school, and a separate air strike in which precision strike missiles scattered tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd.“Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” the fact-finding mission said in a statement.The mission also said that Iranian authorities had committed crimes against humanity during their crackdown on nationwide protests, including illegal killings, torture and persecution.US officials have previously said military operations are conducted in accordance with the law of armed conflict, while Iran has consistently rejected allegations of systematic rights violations.The UN experts said they found reasonable grounds to believe US forces were responsible for an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the city of Minab, where more than 150 people were killed, including around 120 schoolchildren, according to Iranian officials.The attack constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law, the mission concluded.According to the report, the US failure to update information in relation to the school, which was adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval complex, in its targeting databases and to confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.”Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”In June US President Donald Trump said that “nobody” purposefully attacked a girls’ school in Iran in February, citing an investigation into the incident. An initial internal US military investigation showed US forces were likely responsible for the fatal strike in Minab in southern Iran.The Pentagon has since elevated the probe but it has not published any preliminary findings.UN experts said the school was a clearly identifiable civilian object and found no evidence that it was being used for military purposes.The experts reached a similar conclusion over a strike on a sports centre in Lamerd. The report said the attack damaged nearby residential buildings and a school and killed and injured 22 civilians. It concluded that the strike was indiscriminate and therefore constituted a war crime.US Central Command said in a statement in March that US forces did not launch any strikes into the city of Lamerd on that day.The UN mission probe found that the Iranian authorities carried out a widespread and systematic attack against civilians during protests that erupted in late December last year, involving unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and severe restrictions on freedom of expression.Rights groups say bystanders were among those killed during the biggest crackdown since the 1979 revolution. Tehran blamed “terrorists and rioters” backed by exiled opponents and foreign foes the US and Israel.The probe said it could not independently verify the death toll, but that it believed the number of dead and injured was likely far higher than official figures, which say 3,038 people were killed and 25,000 people injured.The government’s response to the protests – including violence and killings, cutting off the internet and use of the death penalty, marked a significant escalation from previous patterns of suppressing dissent, the report said.
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