'Slaughtered in Cold Blood': Iranians Describe US Massacre of School Children to UN Human Rights Council

A grieving Iranian mother told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday that when she sent her children off to their elementary school in the city of Minab late last month, "there was no sign that this would be the last time."

Speaking via video link to the 47-member UN body, Mohaddeseh Fallahat described combing the hair of Mahdiyeh and Amin, two of the more than 100 children killed in a US missile strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School on February 28, the first day of the war.

"No mother is prepared to hear the words, 'Your child is not coming back,'" Fallahat told the council. "I am not just a grieving mother. No. I am the voice of all the mothers who sent their children to school believing they would be safe. A school was meant to be a place of learning, laughing, and building the future—a safe place for the children who were supposed to build the future of this world, not a place where their future is extinguished in an instant."

"Israel and the United States, who are the cause of this suffering, must be held accountable," she continued. "Not for revenge, but for justice, so that the world knows that children's lives are not worthless."

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke after Fallahat, telling the council that the strike on the Minab elementary school was a crime, not a "miscalculation." Those killed in the attack, he said, 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," said Araghchi, "no one can believe that the attack on the school was anything other than deliberate and intentional."

Preliminary findings in a US military investigation of the strike reportedly indicate that American forces were behind the attack, but that it was "the result of a targeting mistake" as the Trump administration conducted "strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part," according to The New York Times.

Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, called for the US to complete its investigation "as soon as possible" and release the findings to the public.

"There must be justice for the terrible harm done," Türk said during Friday's human rights council session.

More broadly, the human rights chief called on the US and Israel to "end their attacks against Iran" and "return to negotiations—the only path towards a durable solution to their differences."

"There is a high and rising risk of further contagion and increased civilian suffering in the countries directly involved," said Türk. "Beyond the region, there are fears of grave economic consequences, from deepening poverty and hunger to shortages of medicine and fuel. It is imperative that all parties halt the escalation."