Autopsy of Bucha victims
Russians fired deadly dart ammunition
April 25, 2022, 7:30 p.m
Forensic scientists examine the bodies from the Kiev suburb of Bucha and make a gruesome discovery: Apparently, the Russian artillery fired a particularly devastating arrow ammunition that tears multiple wounds in human bodies.
The Russian army used ammunition suspected of being prohibited by international law in attacks on the outskirts of Kyiv in March, killing dozens of civilians. The British “Guardian” refers to Ukrainian coroners who found so-called flechette ammunition during the autopsy of the bodies. The Fléchettes were therefore in the head and chest of autopsied corpses.
The newspaper wrote that up to 8,000 of these small metal darts could be fired with an artillery shell. The grenade exploded over the target with a timer, then the arrows went down in a strip up to 300 meters wide and 100 meters deep. The special insidiousness of the arrows is said to be that they can break and bend in the victim’s body and thus cause further injuries.
“We found several really thin, nail-like objects in the bodies of men and women,” Wladyslaw Pirowskyi, a Ukrainian coroner, told The Guardian. “It’s very difficult to find these darts in the body because they’re so thin,” he said. The majority of the Fléchette finds come from bodies recovered in the Bucha and Irpin regions.
Outlawed by international law
Independent weapons experts confirmed the Ukrainian findings to the newspaper. The flechettes are a weapon that was widely used during the First World War. The small metal arrows are part of the ammunition of tanks or field guns. Upon impact with a victim’s body, the dart can lose stiffness and bend into a hook, while the tail of the dart often breaks off, causing a second wound.
According to a number of witnesses in Bucha, Russian artillery fired flechette shells a few days before the forces withdrew from the area in late March. A Bucha resident told the Washington Post that she found several nails on her car.
Although human rights groups have long campaigned for a ban on fléchette shells, the ammunition is not banned under international law. However, the use of imprecise lethal weapons in densely populated civilian areas is a violation of international humanitarian law.