Russian Ballistic Missile With Cluster Munitions:
A Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area in northern Ukraine’s Sumy, killing 11 persons including two children, and injuring 84 others recently.
- Cluster munitions, or cluster bombs, are weapons which, as the name suggests, deliver clusters of smaller explosive submunitions onto a target.
- Depending on the model, the number of submunitions can vary from several to more than 600.
- Cluster munitions can be delivered by aircraft, artillery, and missiles.
- Most submunitions are intended to explode on impact. The vast majority are free-falling, meaning that they are not individually guided towards a target.
- However, many submunitions fail to explode on initial impact, leaving duds that act like landmines, posing a threat to civilians for years and even decades.
- They were developed in World War II and are part of many governments’ weapons stockpiles.
- Their main purpose was to destroy multiple military targets dispersed over a wide area, such as tank or infantry formations, and to kill or injure combatants.
- The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) prohibits under any circumstances the use, development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster munitions, as well as the assistance or encouragement of anyone to engage in prohibited activities.
- More than 120 states have joined the Convention. Notable exceptions include the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, India, and China.
