Cluster Bomb / Submunition event in Hadrut area, Azerbaijan on Fri 2nd October 2020

Azerbaijan continues to target the civilian population of Artsakh, using cluster munitions loaded with sub-munitions prohibited by an international convention.

The journalists of the Fact Investigation Platform managed to obtain evidence of Azerbaijan’s use of rockets with Israeli LAR-160 MLRS cluster warheads in the town of Hadrut in Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh).

During the rocket attack on October 2, Hadrut resident Felix Shahinyan discovered a submunition of an unexploded cluster bomb in the armchair placed in the yard of his house. Warheads were also found in the yard of the house. Fortunately, there were no casualties among his family members, as there was no one in the house.

Components of these cluster bombs were also found in the yard of Felix Shahinyan’s neighbor, 61-year-old Julieta Mrdanyan. Sհe collected fragments of about 10 submunitions from the yard of her house. She told Fip.am that she had collected and kept them with care so that she would show them to her son when he returned from the front line.

The house of the Mayor of Hadrut Vahan Savadyan also suffered great damage due to the Azerbaijani rocket fire. The LAR 160 rocket (with dropped submunition) crashed into the bedroom of the mayor’s house, causing major damage to the house.

The house of Edik Petrosyan, a resident of Hadrut, was seriously damaged as a result of the rocket attack. The couple had gone to their daughter’s house after the shelling, thinking that it would be safe there, while upon arrival they saw that their daughter’s house had been bombed, leveling the living room to the ground.

Other residents’ houses and shops also suffered major damage.

It should be noted that the UN Convention on Cluster Munitions (2008), also known as the Dublin Convention, prohibits the use, manufacturing and sale of all types of cluster munitions. Although it was not signed and ratified by either Azerbaijan or Armenia, the convention entered into force in 2010 and became international law. The then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared that the convention was a major step against the spread of “deadly, inhumane weapons”.

By the way, there is no military facility near the city of Hadrut, and the armed attacks of Azerbaijan are nothing but an unacceptable military aggression against the civilian population of Artsakh.