Tehran (TDI): Iran’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani, claimed that the United States and Israel have destroyed nearly 10,000 civilian sites since the beginning of Operation Roaring Lion, in a speech given during a media stakeout of the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
Iran’s Red Crescent has separately confirmed 65 schools and 32 medical facilities among the targeted locations. The Iranian government says more than 1,300 civilians have been destroyed.
Some human rights organizations working from open source data estimate the total death toll may exceed 2,400. The most searing single incident remains the strike on a girls’ primary school in the southern city of Minab on the first day of the war.
Iran held a mass funeral on March 2 for the165 school girls and staff killed in what it described as a deliberate US-Israeli attack on a school adjacent to an IRGC compound.
The US has not publicly acknowledged responsibility. An investigation by the New York Times, assembling physical evidence, concluded a US Tomahawk missile struck the building.
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The case is now before the UN human rights investigators, who say it may meet the threshold for a war crime under the Rome Statute.
Cultural heritage has also been targeted. The Iranian Red Crescent and UNESCO have confirmed damage to multiple World Heritage Sites, including Golestan Palace in Tehran and Falak-ol-Aflak castle in Khorramabad, both of which carried blue shield heritage protection emblems under international law.
At the United Nations, Iran’s ambassador Amir-Saeid Iravani told the Security Council that the strikes on civilian areas constitute “clear war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Strikes on Tehran have also hit oil storage facilities and residential buildings in central districts. Tens of thousands have fled to the countryside.
Thick smoke from burning fuel depots got mixed with rainfall, producing what the World Health Organization warned is “black rain,” contaminated precipitation carrying toxic pollutants, posing a public health risk across the capital.
Destruction of civilian infrastructure is an unwanted consequence of war, and if this confrontation sees no solution soon, the numbers will only get worse.
