Iranian FM says over 600 schools damaged amid U.S.-Israeli s

GENEVA, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that more than 600 schools across Iran have been demolished or damaged since the United States and Israel launched military actions against the country on Feb. 28, with over 1,000 students and teachers killed or injured.

Speaking via video link at an urgent debate of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Araghchi said a primary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab was hit in what he described as a "calculated" attack, leaving more than 175 students and teachers dead.

Araghchi said Iran is "amid the throes of an illegal war imposed" by the United States and Israel, calling it a "blatantly unjustified and brutal" war of aggression.

Referring to the strike on the school in Minab, he said that given the attackers' "most advanced technologies and the highest precision military and data systems," "no one can believe that the attack on this school was anything other than deliberate and intentional."

He stressed that targeting the school constituted "a war crime and a crime against humanity," and said the incident "was not a mere incident nor a miscalculation," but an act that "demands unequivocal condemnation" and accountability.

He also condemned continued strikes by the United States and Israel on civilian targets, including hospitals, ambulances, health workers, Red Crescent rescuers, refineries, water sources and residential areas, saying such actions reflect a pattern of attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure "with no regard for laws of war and basic principles of humanity."

"The aggressors' targeting pattern accompanied by their rhetoric leave little doubt as to their clear intent to commit genocide," he said.

Araghchi said Iran has never sought war but will firmly defend itself, adding that the Iranian people have the resolve and determination to resist what he described as aggression. He also called for holding those responsible accountable.