Michael Fallon will bow to pressure in the Commons by announcing that Saudi Arabia had privately admitted to using UK-made cluster bombs against rebels in Yemen.

The defence secretary will make a statement on Monday afternoon, more than six months after the Ministry of Defence said it would urgently investigate allegations in an Amnesty International report that British cluster munitions had been deployed.

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The UK is aiding Saudi Arabia with military training but is a signatory to the convention on cluster munitions, which prohibits their use or assistance with their use.

The Guardian reported on Sunday that Fallon had seen government analysis indicating UK-made cluster bombs were deployed in the war, in which Saudi-led forces are fighting Houthi rebels who rose up against the Yemeni government.

Fallon’s admission is a major embarrassment, raising questions about whether the UK and Saudi Arabia are in breach of international humanitarian law.

Fallon is expected to dispute whether there is any such breach. The UK line is that the bombs were used against a purely military target close to the Saudi border and that no civilians were targeted. He is also expected to stress that Riyadh is not a signatory to the international treaty on cluster munitions.

But that still leaves a whole host of questions, given that the UK is a signatory. It also brings into the limelight again the role of British military attached to the Saudi headquarters advising on the Saudi-led coalition’s air campaign and the extent to which they were aware that cluster bombs had been used.

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The MoD has repeatedly said the attachment is only there to give guidance in broad terms about targets being within international law, not operational decisions.



A source said the defence secretary had known about the analysis for about a month. Saudi Arabia publicly denies the allegations.

The Financial Times reported a Whitehall official as saying: “It has been known for some time inside the system that this was a British cluster bomb and at some point we are going to have to come clean about it.”

In the last few months, ITV and Sky News have also reported from Yemen, alleging British-made bombs have been used in the war. The last exports of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia are thought to have been made in the late 1980s.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director, said confirmation from the government would not be a “bolt from the blue” and repeated the organisation’s calls for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

“The reality is that Amnesty and others have been reporting on Saudi Arabia’s use of UK cluster munitions in Yemen for months,” she said. “Back in May we revealed how the Saudi coalition had been using British-made cluster bombs in their attacks near Yemeni villages and farms in the north of the country.

“Over the years, the UK has sold billions and billions of pounds’ worth of weapons, including cluster bombs, to Saudi Arabia, and it’s hardly a surprise they’re turning up in bombed-out villages in Yemen. Thousands of Yemeni civilians have already been killed and injured by the Saudi coalition’s reckless and indiscriminate bombing of homes, hospitals, schools and factories.

“It doesn’t require a belated ‘investigation’ within the MoD to tell us what we already knew: that the UK should immediately suspend all further weapons sales to Saudi Arabia that risk fuelling these appalling atrocities in Yemen.”