War in Ukraine: Cluster bombs evident in attacks on previously-occupied Kherson, report warns

Russian forces have apparently used cluster munitions on civilian populated areas of Kherson at least three times since retreating from the city, a report has warned.

Since November 11, when Ukrainian forces reclaimed the city, Russia has attacked Kherson from across the Dnieper River. As of November 25, the attacks killed at least 15 residents, including a child, and wounded 35 others, the head of Kherson’s city council, Halyna Luhova, said.

These attacks have led many civilians to evacuate the city, including patients at Kherson’s Clinical Hospital.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers visited the city and spoke to numerous eye-witnesses who had seen the aftermath of attacks, which appeared to be from cluster bombs.

This photograph shows a damaged residential multi-storey building in Kherson. Picture: AFP via Getty Images

Cluster munitions, which are banned by an international treaty that neither Russia nor Ukraine have joined, typically explode in the air and send dozens, even hundreds, of small submunitions over an area the size of a football field. Explosive submunitions often fail to explode on initial impact, leaving duds that act like landmines.

Anatoli, a security guard at a nearby car repair garage, said a woman was injured in her chest and left arm after an explosion. “I rushed out of the garage after the explosion and saw her lying on the ground,” he said. “Underneath her jacket, it looked like porridge.”

Anatoli and his colleague showed researchers the site of another detonation, in the garage yard, and a third in the yard of a group of high-rise apartment buildings across the street. They said they had heard between six and seven distinct explosions in quick succession.

Another white-coloured stabiliser ribbon was next to the detonation in the apartment yard, and the fragmentation patterns there and on the sidewalk where the woman was injured were also consistent with those of a cluster submunition. The evidence suggests they were also fired from the south. Researchers were unable to confirm whether the three victims survived.

Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at HRW, said: “Residents of Kherson survived eight months of Russian occupation and are finally free from fear of torture, only to be subjected to new indiscriminate attacks, apparently including cluster munitions.”