ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The US military issued a safety warning to Iranian civilians on Sunday, asserting that Iranian forces are using civilian-populated areas to launch strikes throughout the Middle East, rendering the locations “legitimate military targets.”

“The Iranian regime is using heavily populated civilian areas to conduct military operations,” launching ballistic missiles and suicide drones targeting airports, hotels, and neighborhoods across the region, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.

The attacks endanger “the lives of all civilians in Iran since locations used for military purposes lose protected status and could become legitimate military targets under international law,” the command added.

Iran began a series of retaliatory attacks following the military offensive launched by joint US-Israeli airstrikes against Iran last week, expanding the scope of attacks from contained strikes on airbases housing US forces and US consulates to hotels and other civilian-populated infrastructure, claiming the sites were housing US forces.

The US and Israeli strikes into Iranian territory have claimed the lives of more than 1,300 civilians, according to state media figures, with heavy material damage to civilian infrastructure.

Most notable was the attack on a girl’s primary school in Minab in the south of Iran, killing at least 150, including many students, which reportedly a US strike likely seeking to target an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base near the school, according to an investigation by The New York Times.

Human Rights Watch have called on the incident to be "investigated as a war crime," asserting that "the school’s location within the IRGC Naval Force’s compound did not, in and of itself, make the school a legitimate target."

US officials have denied any involvement in the school attack, with President Donald Trump claiming the atrocity arose from a misfired strike by Iranian forces.

CENTCOM added that crowded areas in major cities like Dezful, Isfahan, and Shiraz are used by the Iranian forces as launch sites for the attacks, urging citizens to “stay at home” and accusing the Islamic Republic of “knowingly endangering innocent lives.”