Congressman pushes for sending banned cluster bombs to Kiev

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
28 Apr 2023 12:38

The artillery shells break up into smaller submunitions in the air and cause significantly more damage than conventional weapons, making them illegal in most countries

An unexploded cluster bomblet seen along a street in Deraa province, Syria, February 11, 2016 (Reuters)

Despite their insidious and deadly impact, Congressman Joe Wilson urged the Pentagon on Wednesday to send controversial cluster bombs to Ukraine, weeks after Kiev reportedly asked for the munitions.

The artillery shells break up into smaller submunitions in the air and cause significantly more damage than conventional weapons, making them illegal in most countries.

"I hope every effort will be made to look into providing the cluster bombs that we have two million available," Wilson said during a House Committee on Armed Services hearing.

It is worth noting that in a letter to US President Joe Biden back in March, a group of Republican congressmen pleaded to deploy cluster munitions to Ukraine.

At the time, Sergey Ryabkov, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, urged the US not to escalate the situation. He continued by saying that US senators advocating for Kiev to be supplied with cluster munitions are unaware of the potential repercussions.

It is worth noting that Ukrainian forces have been using cluster bombs since 2015 in battles against the republics of Lugansk and Donetsk. They fired such munitions on Donetsk on March 14, killing 20 people and wounding 37 others.

A report by The New York Times has recently claimed that Ukrainian troops fired cluster munitions, banned by 110 countries around the world, on a Ukrainian village.

The cluster bombs that the Ukrainian forces used against a village populated with civilians on their own territory are banned by countries around the world for their capacity to haphazardly kill innocent civilians, according to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Almost 20% of these munitions fail to detonate on impact and remain a threat to civilians long after hostilities end, killing and maiming them indiscriminately.

Ukrainian forces have committed multiple war crimes in the form of deliberate attacks against civilian targets, massacres of civilians, torture of POWs, and indiscriminate attacks in densely populated areas.