Police reported finding at least 20 unexploded bomblets in the area of the strikes. His shovel accidentally hit a buried cluster bomb which blew up and killed him. With each war, there is a growing number of victims, many of them children and other civilians, who suffer injury or death from cluster munitions. Cluster bombs are wide area munitions, difficult to use safely in civilian areas.
Cluster bombs are small, and very difficult to track, map, or find.
Many of the submunitions bury themselves, gradually coming to the surface over time, or as a result of agricultural activity. Cluster munitions are sensitive to the touch even when they do not function as designed. Children find them almost irresistible, and often play with them even after they have been warned of the danger. Cluster munitions continue to maim and kill long after a war has ended. Despite these predictable effects, there are no international conventions which explicitly restrict or ban the use of cluster munitions.