UN calls for investigation into deadly strike on school in Iran

GENEVA, March 3 (Reuters) - The U.N. human rights office on ​Tuesday urged what it called the forces behind a ‌deadly attack on a girls’ school in Iran to investigate and share insights into the incident, without saying who it believed was ​responsible.

“The High Commissioner (Volker Turk) calls for a prompt, impartial ​and thorough investigation into the circumstances of the ⁠attack. The onus is on the forces that carried out ​the attack to investigate it,” U.N. human rights office spokesperson ​Ravina Shamdasani told a Geneva press briefing.

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“This is absolutely horrific,” Shamdasani said, adding that images circulating on social media captured “the essence of the ​destruction, despair and senselessness and cruelty of this conflict”.

Turk ​also urged all parties to exercise restraint and to return to the ‌negotiating ⁠table, she said.

The school in southern Iran was hit on Saturday, the first day of U.S. and Israeli attacks against the country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that ​U.S. forces “would not ​deliberately target ⁠a school”. Israel has said it is investigating the incident.

Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. in ​Geneva Ali Bahreini had previously raised the issue ​with ⁠Turk in a letter dated March 1, calling the attack “unjustifiable” and “criminal”.

He said the attack had killed 150 students.

Turk’s office does not ⁠have ​enough information to make a determination ​as to whether the strike constituted a war crime, Shamdasani said.

Reporting by Emma ​Farge; Editing by Ludwig Burger, Linda Pasquini and Aidan Lewis

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Emma Farge

Thomson Reuters

Emma Farge reports on the U.N. beat and Swiss news from Geneva since 2019. She has produced a string of exclusives on diplomacy, the environment and global trade and covered Switzerland’s first war crimes trial. Her Reuters career started in 2009 covering oil swaps from London and she has since written about the West African Ebola outbreak, embedded with U.N. troops in north Mali and was the first reporter to enter deposed Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh’s estate. She co-authored a winning story for the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize on Russia’s diplomatic isolation in 2022 and was also part of a team of journalists nominated in 2012 as Pulitzer finalists in the international reporting category for coverage of the Libyan revolution. She holds a BA from Oxford University (First) and an MSc from the LSE in International Relations. She is currently on the board of the press association for UN correspondents in Geneva (ACANU).

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