![]() ![]() The CCW was signed in 1980, and many consider it to be out of date. The use of air-delivered incendiary weapons is prohibited, for example, but the use of ground-fired incendiary weapons is allowed. The use of incendiary weapons is controlled under international law by the Convention on Conventional Weapons, but the treaty only sets an outright ban in certain contexts. “The fires started by incendiary weapons can also cause secondary explosions when they burn objects on the ground.” “The ZAB-2.5SM submunitions delivered by RBK-500 bombs contain a small bursting charge to ignite the flammable substance as they are released from the bomb in mid-air,” Human Rights Watch explains. ![]() It is not napalm or white phosphorus, which are notorious flammable substances used in other incendiary weapons. Here’s how, per the report: ZAB-series bombs contain a substance believed to be thermite that ignites while falling, leading witnesses to describe the incendiary submunitions as fireballs. They create hell on Earth because they are literal fireballs that rain from the sky. Each one burns for up to 10 minutes and they start fires that very hard to extinguish. The Soviet-era cluster bomb RBK-500 ZAB-2.5SM bombs - an incendiary weapon that delivers 117 ZAB-2.5SM incendiary submunitions - is being used, Human Rights Watch learned from observations of the war zone. The bombs, which burn humans and infrastructure alike, are comprised of a shell that contains flammable submunitions. “Incendiary weapons are controversial for a reason, which is the cruel and unnecessary harm inflicted on their victims.” “The incendiary weapons used in Syria since 2012 are air-delivered and were made in the Soviet Union at state factories in the 1970s and 1980s,” Wareham tells Inverse. The weapons, which Human Rights Watch verified through photographs and video evidence, were manufactured decades ago in Russia at the height of the Cold War. Cluster bombs contained in RBK-250 or RBK-500 containers, "zab" incendiary bomblets. The Russian Air Force drops incendiary cluster munitions on Syrian rebels in Aleppo. Some incendiary weapons deliver submunitions, but they are not cluster bombs because the submunitions contain a flammable substance, while cluster munitions use explosive submunitions.” Some incendiary weapons contain an explosive bursting charge to ignite the flammable substance. “The flammable content is what distinguishes incendiary weapons from other weapons, such as chemical weapons, which release chemicals that kill and incapacitate victims by their toxic properties. “Incendiary weapons produce heat and fire through the chemical reaction of a flammable substance,” Mary Wareham, arms advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, tells Inverse. With Russia’s involvement over the last year has come the new horror of incendiary weapons. Millions have been displaced internally or have fled the country.Īnti-regime rebels hold the eastern part of Aleppo City and Idlib, and have regularly been subject to siege and starvation tactics, crude barrel bombs dropped out of regime helicopters, and chemical attacks. In April, the United Nations special envoy to Syria estimated that 400,000 people had been killed since the fighting began. The civil war in Syria has now gone on for more than five years, and faltering peace talks between the United States, Russia, and regional partners seem to offer little hope to end the violence. Tamara Shopsin's classic 5 Year Diary is now available with a green cover.Add one more horror to the list of nightmares facing Syrian civilians: the increasing use of incendiary weapons by joint Syria-Russian forces.Ī new report from Human Rights Watch documented 18 uses of incendiary weapons by either Russian or Syrian forces against anti-government rebels and civilians in the last nine weeks, a conservative estimate of the number of times the controversial weapons have likely been used. Designed by Shopsin-whose illustration work is regularly featured in The New York Times-and produced by The Ice Plant and Shopsin’s General >more Now available in blue, Tamara Shopsin’s classic 5 Year Diary is back in stock. Designed by Shopsin-whose illustration work is regularly featured in The New York Times-and produced by The Ice Plant and Shopsin's General >more Now available in red, Tamara Shopsin's classic 5 Year Diary is back in stock. Inside the worn leather cover, in brief, breathless dispatches written on gold-edged >more "THIS book belongs to," reads the frontispiece of the little red diary, followed by the words "Florence Wolfson," scrawled in faded black ink. ![]()
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