The United States defended its supplies of cluster munitions Sunday, pointing to restrictions on the transfers, after Human Rights Watch said the bombs had been used by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

The United States defended its supplies of cluster munitions Sunday, pointing to restrictions on the transfers, after Human Rights Watch said the bombs had been used by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

HRW said it had gathered photographs, video and other evidence indicating that cluster munitions had been used in coalition air strikes against in Saada province in Yemen's northern mountains in recent weeks.

It said that analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the weapons had landed on a cultivated plateau, within 600 meters (yards) of populated areas.

"We take all accounts of civilian deaths due to the ongoing hostilities in Yemen very seriously," a US Defense Department official told AFP.

"We call upon all sides to comply with international humanitarian law and to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians."
The official said Washington was "looking carefully" into the HRW report's claims.

HRW said that the munitions used in Yemen appeared to be the CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons manufactured by the Textron Systems Corporation and supplied to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates by the United States in recent years.

The weapon is banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions but Washington permits its use and export because it boasts an unexploded ordnance rate of less than one percent.