The Israeli military said Iran launched a missile with a cluster munition warhead at a populated area in central Israel on Thursday, according to Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesman — the first report of that type of weapon being used in the current war.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to respond to the Israeli claim, which was linked to a ballistic missile that struck Or Yehuda, Israel, and nearby towns. No one was killed by the missile or its bomblets, and it was unclear if anyone was injured.
Cluster munitions have warheads that burst and scatter numerous bomblets, and are known for causing indiscriminate harm to civilians. More than 100 countries have signed on to a 2008 agreement to prohibit them — but Israel and Iran have not adopted the ban, nor have major powers like the United States, Russia, China and India.
Videos and photographs verified by The New York Times show an unexploded bomblet on the patio of an apartment building in Or Yehuda after an Iranian missile barrage on Thursday.
The object, which resembles a narrow artillery shell or rocket warhead, is most likely a submunition similar to those that have armed some Iranian ballistic missiles since 2014, according to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.
“The chances of hitting something increase when you have a missile that might not be as pinpoint-accurate as you would like it to be,” Mr. Hinz said in an interview. “Sometimes you might not need that much destructive force — imagine you want to hit an air-defense or a missile-defense system. These things are not armored, they are pretty soft targets, so just having a geographical spread of the attack could be worth it even if the explosive force and penetrative power is less.”
Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, seconded Mr. Hinz’s identification of the item as a submunition from a cluster weapon. Surveillance footage showing an object striking a sidewalk in Or Yehuda appears consistent with a submunition explosion, he said.
The Times also verified photographs and videos showing three small craters in the same area consistent with explosions of submunitions from cluster warheads. The craters are in a sidewalk, a backyard, and the parking lot of a hospital.
The Home Front Command, the Israeli military unit responsible for emergency response and civilian guidance, said in a statement that “a missile containing submunitions struck and dispersed over a relatively wide area,” and warned the public that some of the unexploded submunitions may still detonate and are therefore dangerous. It urged anyone who finds such an object to report it immediately to the authorities.
The command said it had found at least 10 sites in central Israel that may have been struck by submunitions from a cluster weapon.
The Times was not able to independently verify all of those sites, or verify that the submunitions came from a warhead that would be illegal under the 2008 international agreement, the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It prohibits warheads containing ten or more submunitions that each weigh less than four kilograms.
Israel has used cluster munitions in past wars, most recently in 2006 in Lebanon. Russia and Ukraine have used them in the war underway between them since 2022.
Experts say there is very limited publicly available information about the different warheads used on Iran’s expansive arsenal of ballistic missiles. If Iran used missiles carrying cluster warheads, it suggests that it is digging deep into its arsenal and not holding back from using a controversial weapon.
Israel and Iran have been exchanging fire since Israeli forces began an aerial attack on Iran last Friday, targeting its nuclear infrastructure and top military commanders.
Since then, Iran has launched more than 400 missiles at Israel. Most have been shot down by Israeli air defense systems but some have hit military facilities, residential buildings and, on Thursday, a hospital. Those attacks have killed at least 24 people, according to the Israeli authorities.
Israeli warplanes have conducted strikes in both rural and urban areas. As of Thursday, 224 people in Iran have been killed, according to the Iranian health ministry. Israeli strikes have killed at least 10 senior Iranian military leaders.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu answered “yes” when he was asked in a televised interview with Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster, if Iranian missile with a “fragmenting warhead” had hit Israel.
“There are smaller bombs that if you touch them they explode,” he said. He did not explicitly refer to the missile on Thursday as a cluster munition.
Mr. Hinz, who has studied Iranian ballistic missiles extensively, said that the submunition seen in the images from Israel can be carried by at least two Iranian missiles — the Qiam, which is an Iranian-made version of a Soviet SCUD missile, and the much larger Khorramshahr, which can carry up to 80 submunitions.
Cluster munitions, first used by the German Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War, have long been controversial.
“Cluster munitions cannot distinguish between soldiers and civilians because they spread their submunitions over a wide area and leave behind unexploded submunitions that endanger civilians, like land mines, for months or years to come,” said Bonnie Docherty, a senior arms adviser at Human Rights Watch.
Since the adoption of the 2008 convention, 99 percent of global stockpiles have been destroyed, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition.
The Israeli military circulated a digital flyer with a photo of what looks to be an unexploded projectile and a warning that “it may explode upon touch or movement.”
Natan Odenheimer is a Times reporter in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
Sanjana Varghese is a reporter on The Times’s Visual Investigations team, specializing in the use of advanced digital techniques to analyze visual evidence.
Riley Mellen is a reporter on The Times’s Visual Investigations team, which combines traditional reporting with advanced digital forensics.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.
Adam Rasgon is a reporter for The Times in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
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