Guardian: Banned Israeli Cluster Munitions Used in South Lebanon After 20 Years
November 22, 2025
For the first time in nearly 20 years, banned Israeli cluster munitions have been found scattered across South Lebanon, documented by Guardian reporter Will Christou and verified by multiple arms experts. These weapons are outlawed globally because they shred communities long after the bombs stop falling — killing children, farmers, anyone who touches the unexploded remnants. Lebanon has lived this nightmare before, and now it’s happening again under the cover of “ceasefire.” How many more decades will the world pretend not to see?
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English Script:
Will Christou: These are cluster bombs, and they’ve been widely banned by much of the world. But new pictures seen by The Guardian suggest Israel has used cluster bombs in its recent war in Lebanon. The first indication that the countries used cluster bombs in nearly two decades. We discovered this after obtaining pictures of remnants that were found recently, which we then identified with the help of weapons experts. For example, here’s one of the pictures where you see the remnants of a Barak Eitan cluster munition with the word cluster written in Hebrew on the outside of the shell. Now these are banned internationally for a good reason. Cluster emissions are carrier bombs, or at least dozens of smaller bombs, on an area the size of several football fields, and up to 40% of those submunitions don’t explode upon impact, meaning civilians could stumble upon them later and be killed when they explode. Human rights experts have raised concerns that the use of these weapons were fabrications for people living in Lebanon for decades to come. Now, 124 countries have signed a treaty to ban the use of cluster munitions. One of the countries that hasn’t? Israel. This means that Israel is not bound by the treaty. Now Lebanon has a painful past with custom munitions. Israel dropped 4 million on the country in 2006, leaving more than 1 million unexploded bombs ever since. And that’s actually one of the reasons that the invention of munitions was developed in the first place. Now, when we approach the Israeli military for comment, it did not deny nor confirm its use of cluster munitions, but told us that it only uses, “lawful weapons in accordance with international law while mitigating harm to civilians.”
