Syrian government forces have used at least 13 different types of cluster munitions produced by Russian Federation and Egypt and some dated from the Soviet era, the report said. Syrian state TV said the air force had launched “concentrated strikes” saying tens of them had been killed.
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A total of 343 people were killed in cluster munition attacks and 74 were killed by unexploded submunitions in 2015, the research revealed.
After many years of advocacy by the Cluster Munition Coalition, Cluster Munition Coalition-US and other campaign members, yesterday, Textron, one of the largest producers of globally banned cluster munitions announced it will stop producing cluster munitions.
Human Rights Watch advocacy director and editor of the Monitor, Mary Wareham, says attacks in Syria involving these weapons have increased since Russian Federation began its joint military operation with that country at the end of last September.
But the report said there was “compelling evidence that Russian Federation is using cluster munitions in Syria and/or directly participating with Syrian government forces in attacks using cluster munitions”.
Cluster bombs, dropped by air or fired by artillery, scatter hundreds of bomblets across a wide area which sometimes fail to explode and are hard to locate and remove, killing and maiming civilians long after conflicts end.
The Cluster Munition Monitor has recorded the use of such ordnance by Syrian government forces since mid-2012.
“Nonetheless, this is a joint military operation, so collectively together they are responsible for the actions of their coalition”, Warenham said.
More than 400 people were killed by cluster bombs in 2015, a lot of them dying in Syria, Yemen and Ukraine, which have not signed up to a treaty banning the weapon, an worldwide anti-cluster bomb coalition said on Thursday.
Syria and Russian Federation are not among the 100 signatories of the landmark convention, but HRW says they remain bound by worldwide law, which bans the indiscriminate attacks that are the hallmark of cluster bombings.
The bombs also killed or maimed 104 people in Yemen in 2015.
In May, the Obama administration moved to block sales of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, amid reports of mounting civilian casualties there.
Most casualties reported a year ago from cluster munitions were in Syria and Yemen.
Since the 1960s, more than 20,000 cluster bombs casualties have been documented.
During the release of the report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said: “Cluster munition attacks in Syria and Yemen are causing unacceptable civilian suffering and deserve a strong response”.
“Civilians made up 97% of all cluster munition casualties in 2015 where the status was known (388 civilians, 14 security forces, and 15 without recorded status)”.
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Many of these devices fail to explode on impact, meaning countries such as Cambodia, Iraq, Laos and Vietnam often find it impossible to clear what become de facto landmines.
