UN report cites possible US war crimes in deadly strikes on Iran school, sports center

A United Nations fact-finding mission found “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States carried out two strikes on a school and a sports center in Iran earlier this year and that both constituted war crimes.

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran also found that aspects of Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests that began in late December amounted to crimes against humanity.

Its report, published Thursday, examined both U.S. conduct in the war that began on Feb. 28 and the Iranian government’s response to nationwide protests that began over economic grievances and grew into calls for political change.

The mission said it could not establish a death toll for the protests but had strong grounds to believe deaths and injuries significantly exceeded the government figures of 3,038 dead and 25,000 injured.

The U.S.-related findings focused on a pair of Feb. 28 strikes that reportedly killed about 180 people, many of them children.

One struck a primary school for children ages 6 to 13 in the southern city of Minab. The report cited “credible independent information” asserting that 157 people were killed, including 123 children, all 13 or younger.

The school was located next to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval complex, with the nearest military facility about 235 feet from the school building, according to the report. It said it had found no evidence the school was being used for military purposes.

Citing news reports about a preliminary Pentagon investigation, the mission said outdated intelligence apparently identified the school as part of an adjacent military installation. The report said the failure to verify that the building was a military objective before the strike went beyond negligence.

“Rather, the U.S. 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,” the report said.

A group of former senior U.S. military legal advisers earlier this year argued that recklessness requires proof that a commander or someone else responsible for ordering or planning the attack knew of the risk and disregarded it.

In a letter published in April, they said “it is premature and speculative” to conclude this strike was either a violation of international humanitarian law or a war crime. They wrote that any such allegation “requires a credible factual foundation derived from rigorous investigation.” 

A volunteer holds a child's notebook recovered from Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, southern Iran, Sept. 7, 2026, after a Feb. 28 U.S. airstrike hit the building. A UN fact-finding mission said there are reasonable grounds to believe the U.S. was behind the Feb. 28 airstrikes on a school and sports facility in Iran, and that the strikes constitute war crimes. (Vahid Salemi/AP)

In May, Adm. Bradley Cooper, who leads U.S. Central Command, said the preliminary findings of an internal Pentagon investigation “correlated” the airstrike on the primary school in Minab with a U.S. strike.

The U.N. fact-finding mission also said it found reasonable grounds to believe that U.S. forces were responsible for the Minab strike.

It cited analysis of video showing a missile with the large, “pop-out” straight wings and short tail fins distinctive to a Tomahawk. The mission said the United States is the only party to the conflict that possesses Tomahawk missiles.

The report concluded that the strike violated international humanitarian law and amounted to a war crime, saying U.S. forces failed to take feasible steps to verify that the school was a military objective.

The mission reached a similar conclusion about the Feb. 28 strike on and around a sports center in Lamerd, Iran. Local officials reported 22 people killed and dozens injured. Among those reportedly killed were two schoolgirls, two schoolboys and a 2-year-old girl playing in front of her home.

The U.N. report found “reasonable grounds to believe” that the U.S.-made Precision Strike Missile was used in the strike.

The missiles are designed to detonate above their targets, dispersing approximately 180,000 tungsten pellets over a wide area and producing a distinctive pattern of small holes, according to publicly available information cited in the report.

The mission concluded that the missiles’ effects could not be limited to a specific military target in the populated area. It called the strike an indiscriminate attack and a war crime.

CENTCOM, which oversees U.S. military activity in the Middle East, denied in March that it had launched strikes in Lamerd on the day in question and disputed that the missile seen in widely circulated footage was a Precision Strike Missile.

The U.N. fact-finding mission acknowledged that it reached its conclusions without responses to its requests for information from the U.S. government or the full results of any Pentagon probe.

CENTCOM and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Pentagon has said it is conducting a formal investigation into the Minab school strike, but has not publicly released its findings.