Use of cluster munitions during the 2026 Iran war
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The use of cluster munitions during the 2026 Iran war has been documented primarily in Iranian ballistic missile attacks on Israel after the war began on February 28, 2026.[1][2][3] Human Rights Watch said that Iran repeatedly used cluster munitions in attacks on populated areas in Israel and verified three such attacks between March 4 and March 18, while its review of open-source material suggested that there were likely eight separate incidents between March 1 and March 20.[4] At least four civilians were reported killed in cluster-munition strikes documented by the group.[4]
Cluster munitions are weapons delivered by aircraft, rockets, missiles or artillery that open in flight and scatter many smaller explosive submunitions over a broad area.[5][6] Because a portion of the bomblets fail to explode on impact, they can threaten civilians long after the original strike.[5][6]
The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which entered into force in 2010, prohibits the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions for its states parties.[5] Neither Iran nor Israel is party to the convention, and the United States has also not acceded to it.[7][8][9]
Use by Iran
After the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, 2026, Iranian retaliatory missile strikes on Israel included cluster-munition warheads.[4][10]
On March 4, the first confirmed incident occurred in Or Yehuda, when a submunition struck a commercial area.[4] A second confirmed attack on March 9 affected Yehud, Or Yehuda, Bat Yam and Holon; according to Human Rights Watch, the apparent submunitions likely came from a single ballistic missile and landed across sites up to 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) apart.[4] Two construction workers were killed in Yehud and at least one other person was seriously injured in Or Yehuda.[4]
On March 18, a third cluster-munition attack in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, including impacts in Ramat Gan, Petah Tikva and Bnei Brak.[4] In Ramat Gan, a man and woman in their 70s were killed when a submunition struck their apartment building.[4][10] In another barrage of Iranian cluster bomb attacks, a foreign worker from Thailand at Moshav Adanim was killed by shrapnel from a missile while a group of three women at a beauty salon in the West Bank village of Beit Awwa, near Hebron, were killed when they were struck by debris from a cluster munition.[11][12][13]
An Iranian missile attack on March 28 killed a civilian at a residential building Tel Aviv who was guarding an area in which there had been a fatal missile attack earlier in the war and was struck by a cluster munition while in an unprotected area.[14]