UN mission finds grounds for US war crimes in Minab school and Lamerd strikes

A United Nations fact-finding mission said it has reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes on 28 February, the first day of the war with Iran. One hit Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the southern city of Minab. The other hit a sports centre and nearby housing in Lamerd.

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran published the findings on Thursday. States will hear the report at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday. The mission used a "reasonable grounds to believe" standard. It is not a court and it cannot issue a binding verdict.

What the mission says happened in Minab

Iranian officials put the Minab death toll at more than 150 people, including about 120 children aged 13 or younger and 26 teachers. The report cites independent counts in the same range, including a figure of 157 dead, of whom 123 were children. CNN described the strike as one of the worst civilian casualty events in recent U.S. military history if those numbers hold.

The school stood next to an IRGC naval complex. The mission said that fact does not make the school a military objective. Photographs and video from before the attack show child murals on exterior walls, school signage and a playground. December 2025 imagery showed people in the courtyard. The report found no evidence the building was being used for military purposes on the day it was hit.

Investigators said analysis of video showed a missile with the large pop-out straight wings and short tail fins of a Tomahawk. The United States is the only party in the war that fields that weapon. In May, Adm. Bradley Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that an internal Pentagon review "correlated" the Minab strike with a U.S. attack. In June, President Donald Trump said "nobody did that on purpose" and that "mistakes are made."

The mission's legal conclusion is narrower and harder. It said U.S. forces failed to take feasible steps to verify that the school was a military objective, that the building itself was the intended point of impact for two missiles, and that the attack was not an errant strike or collateral damage. "When targeting the school building, the US acted wilfully," the report states, according to Novara Media's extract. Reuters quotes the finding that the failure to update targeting databases went beyond simple negligence.

Lamerd and the other half of the mandate

The same day, a strike on a sports centre in Lamerd killed 22 civilians, the mission said. Missiles dispersed tungsten pellets. Nearby housing and a school were damaged. Investigators again found no military use of the site and classified the attack as indiscriminate.

The report also covers Iran's own conduct. It found that parts of Tehran's response to protests that began in late December amounted to crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and persecution. The government has given figures of 3,038 dead and 25,000 injured. The mission said it could not fix a total of its own but had strong grounds to believe deaths and injuries ran well above those numbers.

Washington and Israel did not give the mission access to personnel and did not answer its requests for information. Investigators worked from satellite imagery, verified video, weapons analysis and witness accounts. Axios reported that the White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the findings.

What the paper can and cannot do

The mission reports to the Human Rights Council. It cannot send anyone to the International Criminal Court on its own. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. The practical effect of Monday's presentation is political and documentary: a UN-mandated record that names the school, the munition type, the CENTCOM correlation and the legal test the authors say was failed.

That record now sits beside the other Iran file moving through New York. The State Department has cleared visas for President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to attend next week's General Assembly. Pezeshkian is scheduled to speak on Wednesday. The Minab finding will be in the room whether or not any delegation reads it aloud.