British
Defense Secretary Michael Fallon has confirmed that British-made
cluster bombs were used by Britain’s theocratic ally Saudi Arabia
in its war against the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen.
Fallon
addressed the controversial findings of the British government’s
own inquiries in the House of Commons Monday, saying that while the
UK has not supplied such weapons to Saudi Arabia since 1989, there
were British-made cluster mutations dropped in Yemen during the
conflict.
“That
investigation has now concluded. The coalition confirmed earlier
today that a limited number of BL-755 cluster munitions exported from
the United Kingdom in the 1980s were dropped in Yemen, including in
the incident alleged by Amnesty International not far from the Saudi
border by a coalition aircraft,” said Fallon.
Also on
Monday, the Saudi-led Arab coalition said that after 20 months of war
it will stop its use of British-made cluster munitions in Yemen.
“The
government of Saudi Arabia confirms that it has decided to stop the
use of cluster munitions of the type BL-755 and informed the United
Kingdom government of that,” said the Saudi statement, carried
by state news agency SPA.
The new
details have emerged through a leak to the Guardian from sources
which claim that internal investigations support claims in the media
that the outlawed munitions are in use.
The source
said that the findings had been known by the government for up to a
month.
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