The report on Sunday included photographs from Yemen purporting to show unexploded but potentially lethal remnants of American cluster weapons, suggesting that they had failed legally required reliability standards.
If confirmed, the report could put new pressure on the United States over support for its ally Saudi Arabia in the Yemen conflict. The Americans have sold arms and furnished training and expertise to a Saudi-led coalition that has faced widespread criticism for an indiscriminate bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthis in nearly a year of fighting.
“Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, as well as their US supplier, are blatantly disregarding the global standard that says cluster munitions should never be used under any circumstances,” Steve Goose, the arms director at Human Rights Watch, said in the report, according to the NewYork Times.
Human Rights Watch and other groups have previously accused Saudi Arabia of using cluster munitions in Yemen, including in a Jan. 6 strike in Sana'a, the capital, and have criticized the United States as an accomplice.
In a Jan. 12 letter to President Obama, Megan Burke, the director of the Cluster Munition Coalition, a disarmament group, urged him to “demand that Saudi-led coalition members stop using cluster munitions,” and said the United States “should investigate its own role in the recent strikes.”
John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said in a statement Sunday night: “We have seen the Human Rights Watch report, and are reviewing it. Obviously we remain deeply concerned by reports of harm to civilians and have encouraged the Saudi-led coalition to investigate reports of civilian harm.”
Saudi officials did not comment, but have denied ordering the use of cluster munitions in Yemen.