31 MARCH
BRITISH CLUSTER BOMBS KILL 38 AND INJURE 156 IRAQI CIVILIANS
31 March 2003 – British artillery fired cluster munitions during operations in the Iraqi city of Hillah, 100 km south of Baghdad. According to Human Rights Watch –
“In the neighborhood of Nadir, a slum on the south side of the city, every household Human Rights Watch visited suffered personal injury or property damage during a March 31 cluster attack. On the day of the strike, the hospital treated 109 injured civilians from that neighborhood, including thirty children. According to local elders, the attack killed thirty-eight civilians and injured 156”
The report also noted the testimony of Dr. Sa`ad al-Falluji, director and chief surgeon of al-Hillah General Teaching Hospital, that “90 percent of the injuries his hospital treated during the war were from submunitions.”(1)  During the invasion the UK admitted to using a total of 2,100 ground-launched cluster munitions, which accounted for over 100,000 submunitions.(2)
FOOTNOTES
1. Human Rights Watch (2003) “Coalition Conduct in the Ground War,” https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/5.5.htm
2. Ibid.