‘War crime, not miscalculation’: Iran on US Tomahawk missile strike on Minab school that ‘killed 175 students, teachers’

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, blasted Israel and the United States on Friday, calling the strike on an Iranian school at the start of the conflict a “calculated assault” and a “crime against humanity.” Araghchi claimed in a video address to the UN Human Rights Council that the bombing of Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, southern Iran, was a “calculated, phased assault” and that “more than 175 students and teachers were slaughtered in cold blood.”

No one can accept that the attack on the school was not “deliberate and intentional,” he continued, given that both the US and Israel claim to have cutting-edge military technology.

“At a time when the American-Israeli aggressors, in their own assertions, 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,” the Iran foreign minister said.

Calling the strike a “war crime” and a “crime against humanity”, Aragchi said that such an act “demands unequivocal condemnation by all and unambiguous accountability for the culprits” “This atrocity cannot be justified, cannot be concealed, and must not be met with silence and indifference,” he said.

Aragchi insisted that the attack “was not a mere ‘incident’ nor a ‘miscalculation’. “The United States’ contradictory remarks aimed at justifying their crime could not, in any manner, elude their responsibility.”

The attack on the Minab school on February 28, the first day of the war, is still one of the most horrific examples of the ongoing hostilities. Aragchi’s comments coincide with the war’s one-month anniversary on Friday, March 27.

According to preliminary results of a US military investigation, Iran and the US, supported by Israel, started trading strikes on February 28 after one of the missiles, a US Tomahawk cruise missile, accidentally struck the school. The school building that was targeted was formerly a part of the Iranian installation that the US attempted to attack.