Cluster bombs kill more than 400 people, over a third of them children

People inspect a site hit by what activists were cluster bombs dropped by the Russian air force in Maasran town, in the south of Idlib province, Syria, October 7, 2015. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - More than 400 people were killed by cluster bombs in 2015, most of them dying in Syria, Yemen and Ukraine, which have not signed up to a treaty banning the weapon, an international anti-cluster bomb coalition said on Thursday.

Cluster bombs, dropped by air or fired by artillery, scatter hundreds of bomblets across a wide area which sometimes fail to explode and are difficult to locate and remove, killing and maiming civilians long after conflicts end.