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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Remnants of Russian cluster bombs found in Syrian northeast |
| 2022-03-10 |
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Residents of the southern countryside of Deir ez-Zor, east Syria, found, last week, remnants of a bomb they said to be a cluster bomb believed to be remnant of a Russian bombing that targeted the area in 2015. A farmer of Baghouz town informed the Internal Security Forces of North and East Syria (Asayish) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) about a remnant of a bomb in his land. After the Asayish and SDF members extracted it from the ground, it was identified as remnant of a Russian RBK-500, a 500 kg cluster bomb, according to a military source. In December of 2015, Human Rights Watch accused the Russian forces and the Syrian government forces of conducting 20 attacks using internationally forbidden cluster bombs targeting the opposition armed factions in Syria. Although the Russian Ministry of Defense denied the use of such weapons in Syria at the time, the Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov admitted, in a press conference, conducting airstrikes in five Syrian governorates including Deir ez-Zor. The Russian warplanes targeted two oil tanks and three platforms of extracting oil of the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) in Deir ez-Zor area in addition to destroying dozens of large oil trucks, according to the spokesman. In July 2021, Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Sergei Shoigu, said that the army of his country has tested more than 320 different types of weapons in Syria including helicopters since 2015. Al-Monitor website has recently publicized a report regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war saying, “Russia have been prepared for this war for years and this is attributable to the Syrian war since the Russian army was trained in Syrian camps and weapons were tested on the Syrian territory.” The Russian military campaign in Syria, which began in 2015, in many respects prepared Moscow on a military-technical level for the current confrontation between Russia and the United States and NATO, as well as the Russian-Ukrainian escalation. Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, told The New Yorker “Undoubtedly, the Syrian operation gave Moscow confidence in actions in other areas as well. Both in terms of behavior in Ukraine and in terms of behavior towards NATO. Thanks to Russian policy in the Middle East, the Kremlin has learned to play for higher rates, learned to bluff and learned to articulate its position and issue ultimatum,” according to al-Monitor. Under the pretext of “supporting separatist,” Russia started the war on Ukraine on February 24 with a series of missile attacks on sites near Kyiv the capital from the north, northeast and the Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. Last week, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, accused Russia of using cluster bombs in Ukraine and other globally forbidden weapons. Colonel Hamish Stephen de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert and formerly a British Army officer, told Reuters, what happened in Kharkiv “does look very much like cluster bombs, and similar to those I’ve seen going off in Iraq and Syria.” Reporting by Adnan Hamo |
| Posted by:badanov |