UN Rights Chief urges US to conclude deadly Iran school attack

The United Nations rights chief urged the United States to conclude an investigation into a deadly strike on a primary school in Iran at a UN Human Rights Council meeting on Friday, as several states voiced outrage over the massacre of 170 people, mostly children.

The emergency debate at the Geneva council was called by Iran to discuss the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab, a tragedy that took place on the first day of the nearly month-long war launched by the US and Israel.

UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk called for Washington to conclude its probe as soon as possible and publish the results, reports Al Jazeera.

“There must be justice for the terrible harm done,” he said by videolink after meetings with US officials in Washington this week.

The Israeli and US diplomatic missions to the United Nations in Geneva did not immediately respond ?to further questions about the incident and the status of their investigations. Their seats ?were empty as both have disengaged from the body.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Bilal Ahmad, said the deaths of schoolchildren were unconscionable, while China’s Ambassador Jia Guide said he was deeply shocked.

The school was located near a base belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The UN special rapporteur on the right to education, Farida Shaheed, said, “If journalists and civil society groups, using only open source access, could relatively quickly establish the school was separated from the wider compound and visibly marked, the US military, with all its tools at its disposal, surely could have done so prior to the attack. They had an obligation to do so.”

During the session, Mohaddeseh Fallahat, a grieving mother, addressed the council.

She said she remembers combing her two children’s hair on the morning of February 28, then tying their shoes and lifting their backpacks onto their shoulders before kissing them goodbye.

“That morning was like any other,” Fallahat told the session. “There was no sign that this would be the last time.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the council via videolink that the attack was no “miscalculation”, adding the victims were “slaughtered in cold blood”.

“At a time when the American and Israeli aggressors, in their own assertion, possess the most advanced technologies and the highest precision military and data systems, no one can believe that the attack on the school was anything other than deliberate and intentional,” he said.

He claimed the US and Israel had “the audacity to commit the worst humanitarian crimes with impunity”, which is “the direct result of silence in the face of earlier manifestations of lawlessness and atrocities in occupied Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere”.

The foreign minister called on UN member states to denounce the illegality of the “blatantly unjustified” war on Iran. “Indifference and silence in the face of injustices will bring no security and peace,” he added.

Shaheed, the UN rapporteur for education, told the council that the school and other buildings in the compound were “each struck individually by precision munition, meaning that the US military clearly intended to strike the school”.

Ongoing investigations suggest the attack may have been the result of a mistake by the US military due to the use of outdated intelligence.

“If officially confirmed, this would mean that the principle of taking feasible precaution in attacks was most likely violated,” Shaheed said.

More than 600 schools and education facilities have been destroyed or severely damaged by US-Israeli attacks so far in Iran, while at least 230 children and teachers have been killed, according to her office.

“The killing of children can never, ever be justified,” she said.
Turk said targeting schools violated international law.

“Whatever differences countries have, we can all agree they will not be solved by killing schoolchildren,” he said.

Last year, the UN said Israeli attacks damaged 97 percent of Gaza’s education facilities during its genocidal war, which has killed about 20,000 children.