Iran on Friday accused the United States and Israel of committing “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”, citing a deadly airstrike on a girls’ school as evidence of what it described as a deliberate campaign targeting civilians.Addressing the 61st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said that the February 28 hostilities amounted to an “illegal war” imposed on Tehran even as diplomatic engagement with Washington was under way.He alleged that a “calculated, phased assault” on Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab in southern Iran killed more than 175 students and teachers, calling the strike “deliberate and intentional”. “No one can believe that the attack on the school was anything other than deliberate,” Araghchi told delegates, asserting that it constituted a war crime requiring “unequivocal condemnation” and accountability.The minister said the incident formed part of a broader pattern of attacks on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, ambulances, water facilities and residential areas. He claimed that over 600 schools had been damaged or destroyed and more than 1,000 students and teachers killed or injured since the outbreak of hostilities.Describing the campaign as “unprecedentedly brutal”, Araghchi accused the US and Israel of violating international humanitarian law and acting with “impunity”. He further alleged that the scale and rhetoric surrounding the strikes pointed to an “intent to commit genocide”.Tehran rejected US characterisations of the incident as an “incident” or “miscalculation”, linking the current conflict to what it termed international inaction over earlier crises in Palestine and Lebanon. “Iran has never sought war,” he said, while asserting the country would continue to defend itself “as long as needed”.