Experts commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body 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.

They also accuse Iran’s theocratic government of carrying out crimes against humanity against its own people in a report published Thursday.

The report, though non-binding, adds to the international evidence gathered on crimes committed during the war in Iran, and could eventually be used in efforts to achieve justice in international courts.

The fact-finding mission on Iran, chaired by Bangladeshi jurist Sara Hossain, is composed of independent experts and was set up in 2022 by the Human Rights Council, the U.N.'s leading human rights body, based in Geneva.

The experts were anticipated to deliver their findings on Monday before the council, which comprises 47 U.N. member countries.

In response, the White House issued a scathing statement, in which spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the human rights body has “accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades.”

“The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime, which has murdered thousands of its own people, killed Americans overseas, carried out acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and launched indiscriminate attacks against its neighbours in the region,” Kelly said Thursday.

The international fact-finding mission has stated that its conclusions regarding U.S. war crimes are centred on a pair of U.S. airstrikes that resulted in the deaths of at least 178 civilians, among them women and children.

At the outset of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran in February, at least one U.S. missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, according to an investigation conducted by reporters.

No definitive accounting of what transpired has yet been produced.

Iranian state media have reported that 168 people were killed in the strike, the overwhelming majority of whom were children.

“Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe that 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,” a U.N. statement about the team’s findings said.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reporters.

In their report, the experts concluded that “the building of the school was the intended point of impact” and that the resulting damage had not been caused by an errant strike or by collateral damage from an attack on a compound of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard next to the school.

The Trump administration has not yet directly acknowledged responsibility for the school bombing, nor has it disclosed the conclusions of a Pentagon investigation into the incident.

The U.N.-backed team based its allegations on two strikes — one involving Tomahawk missiles that hit the “clearly identifiable” school, and another in which Precision Strike Missiles scattered tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd, also on Feb. 28.

The U.N.-backed team reported that 22 civilian men and women had been killed, while U.S. Central Command has denied responsibility for the strike on Lamerd.

The team found that killings by state security forces in Iran occurred on a “staggering scale,” and that civilians faced “gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by their own government.”

Over the past two years, Iranian security forces have committed “violent repression” by firing assault rifles into crowds, beating protesters and arresting healthcare workers, among other things, the team said.

Detainees faced torture and were denied legal counsel, leaving their families “in the dark” about their whereabouts, the experts said.

The Tehran government stepped up its use of the death penalty, stating that more than 70 people – including five women and three boys – remained at “imminent risk of execution,” they added.

The statement said that the report concluded that many of these gross violations amount to crimes against humanity, including murder, imprisonment, torture, and other inhumane acts committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians.

The experts asserted that the United States and Iran ought to cease all rights violations and crimes, and provide “full reparations to victims.”

The report, which was built on a “victims-centered approach,” was based on interviews with 73 people both inside and outside Iran, as well as documentation, satellite imagery, photographic and video material, and information from “credible” organizations and experts, the experts wrote.

The ongoing conflict that has driven people from their homes in Iran, along with an internet shutdown and a lack of full cooperation from the two governments, partly hindered the team's efforts to obtain information.

Nearly three dozen inquiries from the experts seeking information from Iran’s government went unanswered, they said, as did requests made in June to the U.S. government for information and meetings with officials.