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Vladimir Putin appears to have deployed thermite bombs that disintegrate victims' flesh in Ukraine.
Horrifying footage emerged over the weekend from the town of Vuhledar showing the sky illuminated by white flashes raining down on the streets below.
Thermite bombs burn at a temperature exceeding 2,400C, hot enough to sear through steel and melt human flesh to the bone.
READ MORE: Dead Russian soldiers 'left to become dog food in Ukrainian streets' as invasion failed
The lethal devices, which are made of metal powder mixed with metal oxide, burn rather than explode.
They have been branded the cruellest weapons in Russia's arsenal because they are indiscriminate. Human Rights Watch say they can cause "immediate and lifelong human suffering".
The UN Convention on Conventional Weapons does not prohibit the use of incendiary weapons against military targets.
However, the use of incendiary weapons on civilian targets is a war crime under Protocol III of the convention.
The video that emerged from Vuhledar over the weekend appears to show thermite bombs being used in a residential area.
It isn't the first time such videos have emerged either. Back in May, thermite munitions were seen raining down onto the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.
Reports at the time suggested the weapon used on the steelworks was the 122mm Grad 9M22S Rocket, a surface-to-surface device that ejects incendiary materials above its target.
According to Collective Awareness to Unexploded Ordnance: "The basic variant rocket is designated the 9M22 with other types of warhead installed including chemical, incendiary, smoke or submunitions.
"The 9M22S payload (9N510) consists of 180 un-fuzed incendiary elements which are ignited on ejection by an ignition/expelling charge of six linear shaped-charges (LSC).
"The incendiary elements are ML-5 magnesium cups filled with a thermite-type mixture and packed in a matrix, each element having a burning time of at least 2 minutes."
There have also been suggestions that Russian forces used the weapons in Syria.
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