US-Israeli attacks on civilians, children amount to ‘war crimes’: Iran rights official

The secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights says the US-Israeli attacks on hospitals, civilians, and children during their 40-day war of aggression constitute a “gross violation” of the Geneva Conventions and amount to “war crimes.”

Speaking to the media on Wednesday, Naser Seraj detailed a range of human rights violations committed against the Iranian people during a joint US-Israeli military aggression that began on February 28 and continued until a ceasefire agreement in mid-April 2026.

Seraj said the targeting and assassination of the highest political and religious authority of an independent sovereign state is a premeditated, extrajudicial assassination and a clear instance of the willful killing of civilians.

The US-Israeli aggression began on February 28 with airstrikes that assassinated senior Iranian officials and commanders, including Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

In response, Iranian armed forces launched daily missile and drone operations targeting locations in the Israeli-occupied territories and US military bases and assets across the region.

Seraj specifically condemned the deliberate bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, which was filled with innocent students.

He stated that this constitutes a “war crime” under the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols.

“The principle of distinction has been clearly violated here, and no military necessity can justify the killing of children,” Seraj said.

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Seraj asserted that the silence of international bodies regarding this war crime proves that for Western claimants, “children’s rights” are a political tool to pressure Iran rather than a fundamental value.

“If the bombing of the Minab school is not a violation of children’s rights, then the concept has been rendered utterly meaningless,” he said.

Regarding attacks on hospitals, including Tehran’s Children’s Hospital and Khatam al-Anbiya Hospital, Seraj said these constitute a “gross violation” of the Geneva Conventions and are war crimes.

He noted that at the same time, the West focuses on the alleged “lack of medical access for political prisoners” in Iran, a contradiction that he said clearly demonstrates double standards.

If concern for the right to health were genuine, he argued, the physical destruction of hospitals upon which all citizens, including any potential prisoners, depend would represent the greatest deprivation of medical care.

Seraj also addressed the intentional killing of hundreds of civilians during the war. He criticized Western human rights bodies for focusing on death sentences in Iran while remaining silent about the systematic killing of civilians by US and Israeli forces, calling it “blatant discrimination and politicization” in the international human rights system.

According to the top rights official, the UN Security Council’s inability to pass an immediate ceasefire resolution due to the veto power of one permanent member reveals a fatal structural flaw in the UN’s collective security system.

This approach, he added, severely undermines their institutional credibility and sends a message to human rights-violating states that with Western political support, they can escape accountability.

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