Destruction at one of Europe's largest clothing market "Barabashovo" in Kharkiv on May 16, 2022
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)“Indiscriminate” Russian cluster bombs and “inaccurate” rockets have killed hundreds of people in Ukraine’s second largest city, an Amnesty International report claims.
Russian forces caused “widespread death and destruction” by “relentlessly bombarding residential neighbourhoods” in Kharkiv, the document, released today, said.
The human rights organisation said an investigation found evidence of Russia repeatedly using 9N210/9N235 cluster munitions - which are subject to international treaty bans due to their “indiscriminate” effects.
The report also accused Russia of “routinely” using unguided rockets, which it described as “inherently inaccurate, making them indiscriminate when used in populated areas”.
Unguided artillery shells have a margin of error of more than 100 metres, it said, and inaccuracies are certain to cost civilian lives in residential areas.
“Russian forces have repeatedly launched devasting and indiscriminate strikes using internationally banned cluster bombs on populated residential areas, killing and injuring scores of civilians,” the report said.
Amnesty International said researchers found fins and pellets of 9N210 or 9N235 cluster munitions and fragments of 220mm Uragan rockets.
Researchers were also shown the distinctive pellets which doctors had removed from patients injured in cluster bomb strikes.
Amnesty senior crisis response advisor Donatella Rovera said: “People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine.”
The bombardment of Kharkiv, home to 1.5 million people, began on the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Amnesty has been told that 606 civilians had been killed and 1,248 injured in the Kharkiv region since the conflict began.
Amnesty listed a number of attacks allegedly using cluster munitions including on April 15 in and around Myru Street, in the city’s industrial neighbourhood when at least nine civilians were reportedly killed.
At least six people were reportedly also killed and 15 were injured on March 24, when cluster munitions struck a car park near a metro station where hundreds of people were queuing for humanitarian aid.
Ms Rovera said: “The repeated use of widely-banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives.”
Vladimir Putin’s troops were forced to retreat from around Kharkiv but are now engaged in street-by-street fighting in Severodonetsk as his military campaign focuses on seizing the eastern Donbas region.
Mr Putin’s forces were on Monday bombarding part of the embattled city of Severodonetsk with heavy artillery fire where about 500 civilians are sheltering, according to the provincial governor.
Serhiy Gaidai said Russian forces had taken most of the city but Ukrainian troops remain in control of an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians, including children, are caught in the conflict.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces were fighting fiercely for “every metre” of Severodonetsk in one of the bloodiest Russian assaults since Mr Putin’s invasion started on February 24.
