MESOP SYRIA : THE PEACEKEAPER PUTIN USES INHUMAN CLUSTER BOMBS

News Roundup: Monday, October 12 – Russian-design cluster munitions leave first responders overwhelmed

Hundreds of cluster munitions are landing in Syrian villages, towns and fields as a result of Russian and regime air and rocket attacks that are overwhelming Civil Defense Forces, Wasim al-Adel, an Idlib-based journalist with Marra Today, told Syria Direct on Sunday. “Cluster bombs can cover such a huge swath of territory–first responders just don’t have enough trained techs to find and gather them all up,” explained al-Adel.

While an international ban on the munitions does exist, neither Syria nor Russia are signatories, according to Human Rights Watch. Sometimes cluster munitions explode on impact, other times the palm-sized bomblets malfunction, lying days, weeks or even years in the earth, “until a farmer hits one with a plow and it explodes … we’ve lost farmers, women and children–ten alone in Masaran in rural Idlib–because we don’t have the people, the resources or the training for a comprehensive clean up,” said al-Adel. “You must be extremely careful when handling an unexploded cluster bomb,” a volunteer bomb disposal technician told pro-opposition al-Marra Today on Saturday, as he clenched a reportedly Russian-dropped bomblet in a vice, which he claimed to have rendered inoperable by twisting open with a monkey wrench. “Once you gather them up, you can drop the bombs in a deep, unused well or just put them in a pile and blow them up or shoot them from afar,” he explained. www.mesop.de