3 March 2026
By Dominika
Tomaszewska-Mortimer
UN human rights office
spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani also recalled the horror of a
strike on Saturday which reportedly killed and injured
dozens of girls in a primary school in Minab in the south of
Iran.
“Children, little girls…at the
beginning of the school day being killed in this manner,
backpacks with bloodstains on them – this is absolutely
horrific,” she said. “If there is any image
that captures the essence of the destruction, despair and
senselessness and cruelty of this conflict, those are the
images.”
Ms. Shamdasani said that UN rights chief
Volker Türk had been “deeply shocked” by the impacts of
the hostilities on civilians and civilian infrastructure,
and called for a “prompt, impartial and thorough
investigation” into the circumstances of the Minab
attack.
“The onus is on the forces
that carried out the attack to investigate it. We
call on them to make public the findings and to ensure
accountability and redress for the victims,” she
insisted.
Ms. Shamdasani also stressed that if attacks
are found to be directed against civilians or civilian
objects or indiscriminate attacks, they are “serious
violations of international humanitarian law and may amount
to war crimes.”
Tehran blackout
The OHCHR
spokesperson expressed concern for the welfare of Iranians
“given the Government’s record of cracking down
with lethal force on [a] broad scale against those who
oppose their rule and the new threats of senior
officials against any expression of dissent at this
time.”
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She called on the authorities to safeguard
Iranians’ fundamental freedoms and deplored people’s
limited access to essential information amid a nationwide
internet shutdown.
Since the conflict erupted on
Saturday with Israeli and US attacks on Iran, Tehran
responded by with counterstrikes against Israel and other US
allies across the region. Ms. Shamdasani underscored the
fact that besides Iran and Israel, the hostilities have so
far impacted 12 other countries, destroying homes,
businesses, airports and energy
infrastructure.
Lebanese uprooted
In Lebanon,
where armed militants Hezbollah entered the conflict,
drawing Israeli strikes, “heavy displacement has
been reported across parts of southern Lebanon, the Bekaa
and southern suburbs of Beirut”, said UN refugee
agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Babar
Baloch.
Israel issued evacuation warnings to the
residents of more than 53 Lebanese villages and conducted
intense airstrikes across all three parts of Lebanon, he
said.
As of Monday, “the conservative estimates
suggest that nearly 30,000 people were hosted and registered
at collective shelters,” Mr. Baloch said. “Many
more slept in their cars on the side of roads or were still
stuck in traffic jams, leaving the south to [reach]
Beirut.”
According to media reports on Tuesday,
Israeli ground troops entered southern Lebanon, following
Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel.
The UNHCR
spokesperson underscored the fact that many of the countries
affected by the new conflict “already host millions of
refugees and internally displaced people”.
Further
violence and displacement risk overwhelming host
communities’ capacities, he warned.
Supply chain
fears
Severe disruptions to the transport of goods
due to ever-broadening hostilities in the region are also
affecting humanitarian supply routes and those who rely on
them for their next meal.
Speaking from Cairo, Samer
Abdel Jaber, Regional Director for the Middle East and North
Africa at the UN World Food Programme (WFP), highlighted disruption
in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea which “will
complicate maritime routes and delays and driving
costs for most of our operations that depend on those
routes”.
“With seas contested and
airspace closing, we’re looking at adapting and [using] our
supplier networks in other countries like Türkiye, like
Egypt, like Jordan and Pakistan to support overland
corridors,” he said.
The WFP official added that
Egypt’s ports and the Suez Canal, “a key hub for us to
support our operation in Gaza, but also in Sudan,” are
still functioning.
He said that Israel’s decision to
close border crossings to Gaza since the beginning of the
conflict had been a concern but that “good news” of an
imminent opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing came on
Tuesday.
According to subsequent media reports the
crossing, on the southern border of the Gaza Strip, did
reopen on Tuesday.
“That is timely for us and we
need to get in aid as fast as we can,” Mr. Jaber said.
“We have wheat flour that is sufficient only for 10 days
and food parcels that will maintain our programmes only for
two and a half weeks…We need to make sure that there is
continuous and scalable flow of food into the Gaza Strip,”
he
concluded.
