Attack in the East
Ukraine accuses Russia of using phosphorus bombs
03/13/2022, 16:07
Reports suggest Russian troops are using cluster bombs and other types of weapons in violation of international law. According to a police chief, phosphorus bombs are said to have caused “indescribable suffering” during an attack a hundred kilometers west of Luhansk during the night.
According to a local police representative, Russian troops are said to have used phosphorus bombs in an attack in the east of the country. The village of Popasna, around a hundred kilometers west of Luhansk, was attacked by the Russian army during the night, police chief Oleksij Bilochyzky wrote on Facebook during the night. Phosphorus bombs were also used. There is “indescribable suffering and fires.” The information could not initially be checked by an independent party. Phosphorus bombs contain a mixture of white phosphorus and rubber. Their vapors are highly toxic and cause injuries that are difficult to heal even if they come into slight contact with the skin.
Also in the Donbass in the east of the country, according to Ukrainian sources, a train carrying refugees was attacked during the night. One person was killed and another injured in Kramatorsk, Governor Pavlo Kirilenko said. According to him, people from the region near the pro-Russian separatist areas wanted to take the train to Lemberg (Lviv) in western Ukraine. According to Ukrainian sources, two Orthodox churches in which civilians had sought shelter were also shot at in the Donbass.
In the Donetsk region, the famous Svyatohirsk monastery was attacked in the night, to which almost a thousand people had fled, according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. Around 30 people were injured. The authorities initially gave no information on possible victims of an attack on a church in Sievjerodonetsk in the Luhansk region.
NATO observes use of cluster bombs
According to NATO, Russia also uses cluster munitions in the war against Ukraine. “We have seen the use of cluster bombs,” said General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels at the beginning of March. There are also reports of the use of other types of weapons that violate international law. Russia was recently accused of using so-called thermobaric artillery weapon systems, which cause a particularly destructive combination of heat and pressure waves.
Cluster munitions are rockets or bombs that burst while still in the air over the target and release a large number of small explosive devices, the so-called submunitions. These mini-bombs, about the size of a soda can or aerosol can, then fall to the ground within a radius of several tens of meters. They can penetrate even lightly armored vehicles and not only fatally injure people nearby with their fragmentation effects. Cluster munitions can be fired from the ground by rocket launchers, but they can also be dropped as bombs from aircraft.