US-led coalition warplanes target eastern Syrian towns with cluster bombs: Report

The US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group has reportedly carried out fresh aerial attacks against residential areas in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr, using internationally-banned cluster bombs.

Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Syria’s official news agency SANA that US-led military aircraft struck the town of Hajin in the Abu Kamal district of the province on Wednesday. 

US-led jets also launched a cluster bomb raid on al-Shaafah town in the same Syrian district.

There were no immediate reports about possible casualties and the extent of damage caused.

Cluster bombs are banned under the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), an international treaty that addresses the humanitarian consequences and unacceptable harm caused to civilians by cluster munitions through a categorical prohibition and a framework for action.

On Tuesday, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned the recent airstrike by the US-led coalition against the eastern town of al-Shaafah, which left more than 60 people killed and injured, arguing that the massacre clearly points to the fact that members of the military alliance have no respect for moral values, international rules and regulations besides the lives of innocent civilians.

The ministry, in two separate letters, addressed to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the rotating president of the UN Security Council Ma Zhaoxu, called on the Security Council to assume its responsibilities and to stop US-led aerial assaults.

It also asked the world body to recommend an international, independent and impartial mechanism to investigate the crimes being perpetrated by the US-led coalition.

The letters noted that the coalition is deliberately targeting Syria civilians and making use of internationally banned weapons, including white phosphorus bombs, in Syria.

PressTV-‘US-led coalition drops white phosphorus in eastern Syria’

The US-led military coalition drops white phosphorus bombs on a town in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

The Syrian foreign ministry stressed that the US-led coalition airstrikes were meant to kill as many Syrian people as possible, prolong the ongoing Syrian conflict, destroy the country’s infrastructure and undermine its sovereignty and territorial integrity in flagrant violation of all United Nations Security Council resolutions on Syria.

The letters concluded that the embarrassing silence of the Security Council has encouraged the US-led coalition to kill more Syrian civilians and destroy their properties.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.

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