Deadly attacks on Iran ‘may amount to war crimes’, rights group says
A major international rights group has called for an investigation into three deadly US-Israeli strikes in Iran, claiming they could constitute war crimes.
Amnesty International on Tuesday released a new briefing saying the March 2026 strikes on densely populated areas of Tehran killed and injured dozens of civilians.
Stills from a video showing the impact of the strike on buildings and cars in Niloufar Square. VahidOnline via Amnesty International
Secretary general Agnes Callamard said the strikes “may constitute indiscriminate attacks and amount to war crimes” and called for “independent, impartial, effective and transparent investigations”.
“The available evidence in Tehran points to a series of strikes using explosive weapons with wide area effects on security-related facilities within densely populated urban areas, with devastating and yet entirely predictable consequences for civilians,” she said.
“The civilian death toll, the scale of destruction, the timing of the attacks, the impact on nearby civilian structures and the lack of effective advance warnings point to alarming failures by the US-Israeli coalition to abide by the obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimise civilian harm and spare civilian objects.”
Amnesty said air strikes that destroyed or damaged a facility belonging to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps battalion in Resalat also took out three neighbouring buildings. At least one was a residential building and 16 people died.
It said strikes in the neighbourhoods of Niloufar and Javadieh on police stations, which may be considered fair game as they’re linked to the military in Iran, killed at least 25 civilians amid widespread damage to nearby homes and other civilian structures.
The United States and Iran resumed attacks last week, following a month of relative calm, with the Strait of Hormuz and areas along Iran's southern coast again being targeted.
Satellite imagery from 6 March 2026 (left) shows Basij facility and nearby buildings in the Resalat neighbourhood. On 21 March 2026 (right), imagery shows four distinct buildings with heavy damage and destruction Planet Labs PBC via Amnesty International
At least five people at a wedding were killed earlier in the week during a US bombardment that returned attention to the area where a school was hit in the war's opening strikes.
Amnesty at the time called the strike unlawful, declaring it “must be investigated as a war crime”.
The Trump administration appears to have adopted a dual-prong approach to the conflict, responding militarily to attacks on the strait while going after foreign financial institutions that handle Iran’s money.
But Tehran's hard-line new senior leaders have signalled a willingness to dig in after weathering decades of sanctions.
Iran has found ways over the years to circumvent sanctions, and now the US blockade of its ports, and get its oil to buyers to help ease growing economic pressures.
Callamard called on the US and Israel to “end all unlawful attacks and strictly comply with international humanitarian law”.
“The same international law obligations apply to Iran while carrying out retaliatory attacks, including against Gulf states,” she said.
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