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The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran concluded in its latest report that a Tomahawk missile strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab killed more than 150 people, including around 120 children, according to Iranian officials whose figures the mission reviewed alongside other evidence. A second strike on a sports complex and adjacent residential area in Lamerd dispersed tungsten pellets from precision strike missiles, killing or injuring 22 civilians while also damaging nearby buildings and another school. The mission, which submitted its findings to the UN Human Rights Council, determined that both attacks on clearly identifiable civilian sites amounted to indiscriminate strikes resulting in civilian deaths and infrastructure damage.
In both cases the experts established reasonable grounds to believe US forces carried out the strikes, citing the exclusive US possession of the relevant missile types, media reports of a preliminary American military inquiry, and the absence of evidence that the locations served military purposes at the time. The mission’s assessment found that US forces had opportunities to update targeting databases and verify the civilian character of the school, which sat adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard complex, yet proceeded with awareness of substantial risk to civilians. This recklessness exceeded mere negligence and met the threshold for the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack, the report stated.
US Central Command has denied responsibility for the Lamerd strike, while President Donald Trump stated in June that nobody purposefully attacked a girls’ school in Iran and referenced an ongoing investigation into the incident. The fact-finding mission’s report noted that no final public accounting from US authorities has addressed the full scope of the events on the opening day of the US and Israeli military campaign against Iran. Iranian state media placed the Minab death toll at 168, most of them children, a figure that informed but was not solely relied upon by the UN experts.
The same report from the mission, chaired by Bangladeshi jurist Sara Hossain and established by the Human Rights Council in 2022, documented crimes against humanity committed by Iranian authorities during their crackdown on nationwide protests that began in late 2025 and continued into 2026. These violations included murder, torture, imprisonment and other inhumane acts carried out as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians, with the scale of killings by security forces described as staggering and likely exceeding official figures. Civilians in Iran have found themselves trapped between these government actions and the violations arising from the conflict with the United States and Israel, the mission determined.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran urged both the US and Iranian governments to cease all violations immediately, ensure full reparations for victims and guarantee non-repetition of such acts. It called for an end to hostilities and renewed diplomatic efforts by all member states to achieve permanent peace in the region, while encouraging third states to pursue accountability through universal jurisdiction where appropriate. The experts emphasized that their conclusions rested on evidence gathered from multiple sources, including media reporting and official statements, to establish the factual basis for the strikes’ attribution and legal classification.
