Hundreds of civilians have been killed in Kharkiv by Russian indiscriminate shelling using cluster munitions, Amnesty International denounces in a report published on Monday 13 June. Researchers from the human rights organization investigated 41 strikes that killed at least 62 people and injured at least 196. They found evidence of Russian forces’ repeated use of cluster bombs. 9N210/9N235 ammunition and scatterable mines, both banned by international treaties due to their indiscriminate effects.
“The people of Kharkiv have faced a relentless barrage of indiscriminate attacks over the past few months, says Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International. People have been killed in their homes and on the streets, on playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queuing for humanitarian aid or shopping for food and medicine”. It denounces the use “repeated and shocking” of cluster munitions, which “shows complete disregard for the lives of civilians”.
The report, entitled “Anyone can die at any time: Russian forces’ indiscriminate attacks in Kharkiv”, recalls that Russia is not a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions or the Landmine Convention. antipersonnel. However, he points out that “international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks and the use of weapons which, by their nature, strike indiscriminately”.
Strike against a playground
The bombardment of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine where 1.5 million people live, began on February 24, the first day of the Russian offensive. Residential neighborhoods in the northern and eastern parts of the city were the most affected. On March 24, at least six people were killed and 15 others injured by cluster munitions in a parking lot near the Akademika-Pavlova metro station, where hundreds of people were queuing for humanitarian aid .
In another neighborhood, Oksana Litvynyenko was walking with her husband, Ivan, and their 4-year-old daughter on a playground when several cluster munitions exploded next to her. Shrapnel punctured his back, chest, abdomen, lungs and spine. “When my daughter saw her mother on the ground in a pool of blood, she said to me: ‘Let’s go home: Mum is dead and the people are dead’. She was in shock and so was I. I still don’t know if my wife will recover, told Ivan Litvynyenko. Doctors cannot say if she will be able to speak or walk again. Our world has been turned upside down. » The attack took place in the middle of the afternoon, when many other families were on the playground with their children, Amnesty International said. On site, researchers found characteristic fins, metal pellets and other fragments from the 9N210/9N235 cluster munitions.
You have 6.3% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.