Cluster bombs killed, wounded over 1,000 in Ukraine since 2022: monitor

GENEVA: More than 1,000 people have been killed or wounded by cluster munitions in Ukraine since Russia launched its war, a monitor said on Monday, urging all countries to ban the weapons.

Since Russia began its invasion of its western neighbour in February 2022, Ukraine has registered the highest number of recorded annual cluster munition casualties in the world, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in its annual report.

It said cluster bombs had been used by both sides in Ukraine and the weapons had killed and wounded more than 1,000 people there since the war began. The vast majority of casualties were registered in 2022. But the report said the figure for 2023 was probably a dramatic underestimate.

Cluster munitions can be dropped from planes or fired from artillery before exploding in mid-air and scattering bomblets over a wide area. They pose a lasting threat since many fail to explode on impact, effectively acting as landmines that can explode years later.

In Ukraine, more farmland is now contaminated by cluster munition remnants than by landmines, the report said. Before the war, Ukraine had registered no cluster munition casualties for several years.

But it recorded 916 in 2022 and it accounted for nearly half the 219 casualties recorded worldwide last year. Loren Persi, head of the impact team on the project, told reporters the decrease in registered casualties between 2022 and 2023 “unfortunately may not really mean fewer people will suffer because of use in this period”. He pointed out that the team knew of “many” such attacks in Ukraine last year where no casualties were recorded, but where casualties may very well have occurred.