MOSCOW, August 6 (RIA Novosti) — Phosphorus bombs were intentionally aimed at civilian targets in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas Region because there are no military facilities in the strike zone, Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said Wednesday.
“The [Russian] Investigative Committee has received irrefutable evidence on the use of this [prohibited] weaponry [similar to phosphorus bombs] by Ukrainian military forces; moreover it has been used against civilians in the Donetsk Region because there are not any military facilities in the strike zone,” Markin said in a statement on the committee’s website.
Russia is currently attempting to identify those among Ukraine’s security officials behind the crime, the Investigative Committee said, adding that they will be punished in line with Russian law.
The criminal case materials are to be transferred to relevant international judicial bodies as was done when investigating the crimes committed by Georgia’s military against the population in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia during the August 2008 war.
According to the conclusions of a forensic chemical analysis, soil samples that witnesses in the targeted areas have given to Russian investigators contain combustion products from an N-17 petrol bomb put in mines and aerial bombs.
“Basically it is more sophisticated and deadly variant of incendiary shells which before were stuffed with white phosphorus. Such a mixture burns a person through and almost impossible to be put out,” the committee said in a statement.
The use of the substance explains why people in the blast area were subjected to terrible suffering and condemned to painful deaths, not to mention the resulting strong psychological shock, according to the statement.
The eastern Ukraine independence supporters have repeatedly accused Kiev-forces of using phosphorous bombs, which are banned by the Geneva Conventions. White phosphorus can cause injuries and death in three ways: by burning deep into tissue, by being inhaled as a smoke, and by being ingested. Extensive exposure by burning and ingestion is fatal.
