Amnesty International said on Thursday that Iran fired widely-banned cluster munitions at Israel during a war between the two countries in June, in attacks that endangered civilians.
“Last month, the Iranian forces fired ballistic missiles whose warheads contained submunitions into populated residential areas of Israel,” the human rights group said, citing new research.
The organisation said it analysed photos and videos showing cluster munitions that, according to media reports, struck inside the Gush Dan metropolitan area around Tel Aviv on June 19.
On top of that, the southern city of Beersheba on June 20 and Rishon LeZion to the south of Tel Aviv on June 22 were also “struck with ordnance that left multiple impact craters consistent with the submunitions seen in Gush Dan”, Amnesty said.
“By using such weapons in or near populated residential areas, Iranian forces endangered civilian lives,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director at Amnesty International.
“Iranian forces’ deliberate use of such inherently indiscriminate weapons is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”
Cluster munitions explode in mid-air and scatter bomblets. Some of them do not explode on impact and can cause casualties over time, particularly among children.
Neither Iran nor Israel is among more than a hundred countries that are party to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits the use, transfer, production and storage of cluster bombs.
Amnesty said international law “prohibits the use of inherently indiscriminate weapons, and launching indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians constitutes a war crime”.
Israel and Iran fought a 12-day war sparked by an Israeli bombing campaign on June 13.
Israel said the strikes were aimed at preventing the Islamic republic from developing a nuclear weapon, an ambition Tehran has consistently denied.
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