U.N. panel cites possible U.S. war crimes as Trump again says Iran wants a deal

Human rights experts commissioned by the U.N. say they have found “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran, including on a school in the southern city of Minab.

The international fact-finding mission on Iran says the findings center on a pair of airstrikes which killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children.

“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 team said in a statement.

The team also said that killings by Iranian state security forces occurred on a “staggering scale” in Iran.

At the start of the war in February, at least one U.S. missile hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh in Minab, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. Iranian state media have said 168 people were killed in the strike, most of them children. 

The U.S. was “likely” responsible for the bombing, sources told CBS News in March, citing a preliminary U.S. assessment, but it did not intentionally target the school and may have hit it in error, possibly due to the use of dated intelligence which wrongly identified the area as still being part of an Iranian military installation.

The other incident cited by the U.N. rights experts was an attack using precision strike missiles that dispersed tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd, also on Feb. 28.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House or U.S. military on Thursday to the claim of possible war crimes, but Central Command has repeatedly rejected such accusations by Iran and said the U.S. military never targets civilians, which it accuses Iranian forces of doing regularly.  

CBS/AP