The United Nations Rights Chief, Volker Turk has urged the United States to conclude an investigation into a deadly strike on a primary school in Iran which killed 170 people, mostly children.
The attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab took place on the first day of the nearly month-long war launched by the US and Israel.
Turk made the plea in an emergency debate at a UN Human Rights Council. The emergency debate was called by Iran to discuss the deadly attack.
The school was located near a base belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The UN Human Rights Chief called for Washington to conclude its probe as soon as possible and publish the results. “There must be justice for the terrible harm done,” he said by videolink after meetings with US officials in Washington this week.
Turk said that 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 that Israeli attacks damaged 97 percent of Gaza’s education facilities during its genocidal war, which has killed about 20,000 children.
During the session, Mohaddeseh Fallahat, a grieving mother, addressed the council. She said that 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. There was no sign that this would be the last time.”
Mohaddeseh Fallahat
The seats of the Israeli and US diplomatic missions to the United Nations in Geneva were empty as both have disengaged from the body.
Several states voiced outrage over the massacre at the Iranian school. Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Bilal Ahmad, said that the deaths of schoolchildren were unconscionable, while China’s Ambassador Jia Guide said that he was deeply shocked.
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.” She added, “They had an obligation to do so.”
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 that 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.
According to her office, 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. “The killing of children can never, ever be justified,” she said.
Iran Says Attack On School Was Deliberate
Meanwhile, 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.”
Abbas Araghchi
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.
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