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GENEVA — Over 900 people were killed or injured by cluster munitions in Ukraine last year amid broad Russian use of the widely-banned weapons, propelling global casualty figures to record levels, a report showed on Tuesday.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, it has "extensively" used stocks of old cluster munitions and newly developed ones, the Cluster Munition Coalition said in an annual report, adding that Ukrainian forces also used such weapons "to a lesser extent".

Ukraine had registered no cluster munition casualties for several years but recorded 916 deaths and injuries last year, nearly all of them involving civilians, it said.

"The vast majority of the cluster munition rocket missile and artillery attacks in Ukraine ... have been conducted by Russian forces," said Mary Wareham, the arms advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, who participated in the report.

"That is I think the major reason for the uptick in civilian casualties," she told reporters in Geneva.

Lasting threat 

The Ukrainian casualties accounted for the vast majority of the global figure, which rose to 1,172 in 2022 — the highest since CMC began reporting in 2010.

A full 890 of the casualties registered in Ukraine — 294 deaths and 596 injuries — happened during attacks using cluster munitions, the monitor said.

Cluster munitions can be dropped from planes or fired from artillery before exploding in mid-air and scattering bomblets over a wide area.

They also pose a lasting threat, as many fail to explode on impact, effectively acting as landmines that can go off years later.

Twenty-six of the casualties recorded in Ukraine last year were caused by such remnants.

The report said 855 of the known casualties in Ukraine — 93.3 per cent — were civilians, while 58 were military and three were deminers.

Loren Persi, a co-author of the report, stressed that many casualties could have gone unrecorded, pointing to indications that there were at least another 51 cluster munition attacks in 2022 where casualties were not recorded.

‘Appalled’ 

Beyond Ukraine, cluster munition attacks were registered last year in Syria and Myanmar, with such attacks across the three countries causing 987 casualties in total.

In 2021, no casualties were attributed to cluster munition attacks anywhere in the world.

At least 185 people were meanwhile killed or wounded by cluster munition remnants across Ukraine, Syria and Myanmar and five other countries: Azerbaijan, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon and Yemen, the report said.

That compares to 149 casualties in 2021, it said, pointing out that children make up over 70 per cent of all casualties from cluster munition remnants.

Russia, Ukraine, Syria and Myanmar have not joined the convention prohibiting the use, transfer, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs, which has 112 state parties and 12 other signatories.

The United States, which is also not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CMC), meanwhile sparked widespread outcry in July with its decision to provide Kyiv the weapons.

“We were appalled by the decision,” Wareham said, adding that her organisation had for a year been fighting the move “behind the scenes”.

The last US company manufacturing cluster munitions halted production in 2016, but CMC warned the country was “developing and producing replacements for cluster munitions that may still fall under the definition of cluster munitions prohibited by the convention”.

“We need to find out more about those particular weapon systems,” Wareham said.

CADIZ, Spain — The European Union's top diplomat confirmed on Tuesday that Johan Floderus, a Swedish diplomat working for the EU, has been held captive in Iran for more than 500 days.

Arriving at a meeting on development in the Spanish city of Cadiz, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters that Brussels was pushing "relentlessly" for the 33-year-old's release.

On Monday, Sweden partially confirmed a New York Times report on the detention, announcing that a Swedish citizen in his thirties had been held in Iran since April 2022.

But Borrell went further, confirming the prisoner's name and that he works for the EU diplomatic corps.

"I want to say something about, if you allow me, a specific case, the case of Mr Floderus. He's a Swedish citizen who worked for the European Union and has been detained illegally in Iran for the last 500 days," Borrell said.

"I want to stress that I personally, all my team at all levels — European institutions in close coordination with the Swedish authorities, which have the first responsibility of consular protection — and with his family, have been pushing the Iranian authorities to release him.

"Every time we had diplomatic meetings, at all levels, we have put the issue on the table. Relentlessly.

“We have been working for the freedom of Mr Floderus and we will continue doing that in close contact with the family, respecting their will, and for sure with the Swedish government,” he said.

“This is very much in our agenda, in our heart and we will not stop until Floderus will be free.”

Shortly before Borrell went public with his concerns, Floderus’ Swedish family issued a statement.

“We, Johan’s family, are deeply worried and heartbroken. Johan was detained suddenly and without reason while on vacation and has now been in prison in Iran for more than 500 days,” they said.

“We know that many are working hard to get him released and we are grateful for that. At the same time, every day is a huge ordeal, for us and above all for Johan,” the statement continued.

“He must be released and allowed to come home immediately.”

Iran announced in July last year that it had arrested a man on suspicion of espionage, two weeks after an Iranian citizen received a life jail term in Sweden for his role in the Iranian regime’s 1988 mass executions of thousands of opponents.

A Stockholm court found former Iranian prison chief Hamid Noury guilty of “aggravated crimes against international law” and “murder”.

Several capitals have accused Iran of practising “hostage diplomacy” — arresting Western nationals to obtain concessions such as the release of detained Iranians.

In May, Belgian humanitarian worker Olivier Vandecasteele, 42, was released after 15 months in detention for alleged spying in a prisoner swap for Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, sentenced to 20 years for plotting to bomb an opposition rally in Paris.

TOKYO — Japan’s government on Monday increased the size of an aid package for the fishing sector after China banned its seafood in the wake of the release of wastewater from Fukushima’s crippled nuclear plant.

The announcement came as more than 100 fishermen and locals living near Fukushima were to file a lawsuit this week seeking to stop the discharge.

The 20.7 billion yen ($141 million) in additional funding announced by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida comes on top of an existing 80 billion yen aimed at minimising reputational damage for the industry and keeping businesses afloat.

The beefed-up aid now totalling 100.7 billion yen ($688 million) was a reflection of the government’s “determination to protect” a sector already scarred by the 2011 nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, Kishida said.

Twelve years after one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents, Japan began on August 24 to discharge treated cooling water diluted with seawater into the Pacific, with authorities insisting it was safe.

Many Japanese fishermen have been against the release, fearing that it will undo years of efforts to improve the industry’s image since 2011.

The more than 100 plaintiffs in Fukushima and neighbouring prefectures will file the lawsuit in the Fukushima district court on Friday, Sugie Tanji, a member of the group’s secretariat, told AFP.

“The government failed to keep to its promise of gaining agreement from fishermen before taking such a decision to release,” she said.

“This is a wrong policy as it ignores strong opposition from not only the Fukushima fishermen’s cooperative but also from cooperatives across the country,” a group statement said.

“The release to the ocean can never be tolerated as it brings about further suffering to victims of the nuclear accident,” it added.

The water release has generated a fierce backlash from China, including a blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports.

Japanese government offices and businesses have also been bombarded with thousands of nuisance calls from Chinese phone numbers related to the water release.

The Tokyo city government alone received 34,300 calls from August 24 to 31, it said.

Japanese government officials have made efforts to reassure the public that fish and other produce from Fukushima is safe to eat.

Last week, Kishida and US envoy to Japan Rahm Emanuel, among others, ate fish from Fukushima in front of TV cameras.

‘Ours is the best’ 

Before the water release, China was Japan’s biggest export destination for seafood and Beijing’s ban has people in the sector worried.

Tokyo wholesaler Yoshinobu Yoshihashi’s business has seen shipments of items including oysters, sea urchins and splendid alfonsino fish to some Asian neighbours “more than halve”.

“We’re having it quite rough,” Yoshihashi told AFP at the huge Toyosu fish market on Saturday.

“Especially in places like Hong Kong and Macau, the damage is quite acute. We’re hearing from our clients there that their customers aren’t coming in any more, and that they are shunning Japanese fish,” he said.

The Japanese government “should have done more to communicate globally the safety of the water before releasing it. There are some people even within Japan who say they’re scared”, he said.

“I have always been and still am proud of Japanese fish. Ours is the best.”

NICOSIA — French-Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz was arrested in Cyprus on a Romanian warrant seeking his extradition over an unserved sentence, his spokesman said on Sunday, as Cyprus police confirmed the arrest of an Israeli national.

The foreign national was arrested at Larnaca International Airport on Thursday under a Europol arrest warrant issued by Romania, a police spokesperson told AFP.

He appeared at a Larnaca court on Friday for an extradition hearing, which is scheduled to resume on September 8.

A Romanian court had sentenced Steinmetz in absentia to five years in jail in 2020 for setting up "an organised criminal group" in a series of land deals between 2006 and 2008 that cost Romania an estimated 135 million euros ($152 million).

"Steinmetz was temporarily held by the Cypriot authorities, during his arrival at the Larnaca airport, due to an European Arrest Warrant [EAW] issued by the Romanian authorities", a statement from his spokesman said.

The 67-year-old billionaire was being held at a police station as the local Cypriot authorities were set to decide on how to proceed on the matter, the spokesman told AFP.

A Greek court had rejected the same extradition request by Romania last year after Steinmetz was detained in Athens, the statement noted.

"Steinmetz welcomes the opportunity to be vindicated in one more European state against Romania, a country infamous for its disrespect to human rights," the statement said.

"He is also confident that justice will prevail in Cyprus as well, confirming that the strong foundations of the EU's moral and legal system will triumph against undemocratic practices such as those of the Romanian authorities."

In a separate case earlier this year, Steinmetz was found guilty by a Swiss court of corruption linked to mining rights in Guinea, a decision his team said they would appeal at Switzerland's highest court.

News of his arrest came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to Cyprus for a trilateral summit with the Cypriot president and Greek prime minister on Monday.

LONDON — The number of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats from northern France to Britain hit a new daily high for 2023, UK government statistics released on Sunday showed.

Some 872 migrants aboard 15 different vessels made the perilous journey across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes on Saturday, beating this year's previous 24-hour high of 756 on August 10.

It brings the total number to have arrived on the shores of southeast England so far in 2023 to more than 21,000.

That is less than the levels seen at this point last year, but still presents a major political and practical headache for the UK government.

London promised tighter border controls after the country left the European Union, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made "stopping the boats" a key priority.

His Conservative government has branded the cross-Channel route "illegal" and passed legislation blocking asylum applications from anyone arriving without prior authorisation.

It also wants to send migrants to Rwanda for processing and resettlement there, but both policies are on hold amid a legal challenge to the African relocation plans.

More than 100,000 migrants have crossed the Channel on small boats from France to southeast England since Britain began publicly recording the arrivals in 2018.

They have strained Britain's asylum system, with a growing backlog of more than 175,000 people, including children, waiting for an initial decision by the end of June.

The route has also repeatedly proved perilous, with numerous capsizes and scores of migrants drowning in the Channel's waters over the last decade.

KYIV — Russian drones targeted Ukraine's southern Odesa region in the early hours of Sunday, with Moscow hitting a Danube port on the border with NATO member Romania in an attack condemned by Bucharest.

Moscow has hit Ukrainian port infrastructure on the Black Sea and on the Danube for weeks, since exiting a key deal that allowed the safe passage of ships carrying grain.

The attack came on the eve of a summit in Russia between Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who hopes to revive the grain deal.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that he discussed "ways to ensure the functioning" of a maritime corridor set up by Kyiv to ensure safe navigation with France's Emmanuel Macron.

The Odesa region attacks also came as Kyiv has claimed some successes in its counter-offensive on the southern front this week.

Ukraine said Russia had hit the Odesa region with a barrage of Iranian-made Shahed drones, saying it downed 22 of them.

But Kyiv also said that some of the drones hit the Danube area, saying that at least two people were wounded in attacks on "civilian industrial" infrastructure.

The Russian army said it had targeted "fuel storage" facilities in the Ukrainian port of Reni, which lies on the Danube river that separates Ukraine from Romania.

Moscow has targeted the Danube ports of Reni and Ismail — both near Romania and across the war-torn country from fighting hotspots — several times over the last few weeks.

Reni — which also lies close to Moldova — is a sea and river port and important transport hub.

Bucharest’s defence ministry said the attacks were “unjustified and in deep contradiction with the rules of international humanitarian law”.

It also stressed that the Moscow drone attacks did not “generate any direct military threat to the national territory or territorial waters of Romania”.

Neighbouring Moldova called the attack “brutal”.

“Russia must be held accountable for every piece of infrastructure destroyed,” Chisinau’s pro-EU President Maia Sandu said on social media.

The Odesa region attacks came as Kyiv this week reported some successes on the southern front of its counteroffensive.

On Wednesday, Kyiv said it had recaptured the village of Robotyne, calling it a strategic victory that would pave the way for its forces to push deeper into Russian positions towards Moscow-annexed Crimea.

General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, leading the southern counteroffensive, told The Guardian newspaper this weekend that Kyiv’s army has made an important breakthrough by breaching Russian lines near Zaporizhzhia.

“We are now between the first and second defensive lines,” Tarnavskiy — who led Ukrainian troops to liberate the southern city of Kherson — told the UK paper.

Heavily mined territory had slowed Ukrainian troops, saying that sappers had cleaned a route by foot and at night.

The paper quoted him as saying that Kyiv’s forces are now back on vehicles and that Russia has redeployed troops to the area.

“But sooner or later, the Russians will run out of all the best soldiers,” Tarnavskiy said.

“Everything is ahead of us.”

He admitted difficult losses for Kyiv, saying that “we are losing the strongest and best”.

Russia has not announced another mobilisation, seen as an unpopular measure, but has led an active campaign to attract more men into the military as its Ukraine offensive drives on into a 19th month.

Ex-president and Security Council chairman Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that Moscow had recruited 230,000 people into the army since the start of the year.

“According to data from the ministry of defence, 280,000 people have joined the Russian army on contracts from January 1,” Medvedev said, according to the TASS news agency.

“Part of them were in the reserves, part of them volunteers and other categories,” he added, during a visit to the Far Eastern Russian island of Sakhalin.

In early August, Medvedev said the army had recruited around 230,000 people since the start of the year.

AFP is not able to independently verify these numbers.