http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,20442,00.html
No bangs, no smoking guns: victims just fell and bled
SAM KILEY IN RAMALLAH,
TUESDAY OCTOBER 17 2000
ISRAELI snipers using specialised rifles fitted with silencers
yesterday picked off high-profile Palestinian rioters in Ramallah in
an apparent bid to "take out" ringleaders of the 19-day uprising.
Stone-throwing youths watched, stunned, as men and boys at the
barricades collapsed with small bullet holes in their chests,
testicles, arms and hips. Those wounded included the nephew of Marwan
Barghouti, the leader of the West Bank intifada who has been using the
uprising to position himself as a potential successor to Yassir
Arafat.
Coming soon after an Israeli armoured vehicle charge at rioters, no
one knew quite what to do about the new approach to riot control. The
Israelis hurled stun grenades, and fired the occasional rubber bullet.
The Palestinians were used to that, ducking and diving and chucking
stones back. But the use of rounds which apparently came from nowhere
terrified the crowds. There were no bangs, no smoking guns. The
victims just flopped down and bled, sometimes unnoticed.
Tahir Afaneh, 18, was unmoved by the sight of two men who fell close
to him and were whisked away by ambulance. He already had an arm and a
knee bandaged from rubber bullet wounds sustained earlier in the
"al-Aqsa intifada".
Easily visible in a white T-shirt, Mr Afaneh stepped from behind a car
to whirr his slingshot and take aim at Israeli soldiers 100 yards
away. There was no sound of a shot, but he spun around, falling on
his back. "I didn't hear a thing. I didn't feel much, I just fell
over," he said in Ramallah's central hospital where he was treated for
a wound to his pelvis, where the bullet lodged.
Hosni Atari, the doctor who treated him, said he had never seen the
results of the new Israeli weapon before. Hollow-nosed bullets opened
like an umbrella on impact, spun about, chewing up internal organs,
and seldom left an exit wound.
The long-barrel 22mm rifle was deadly even at long range - and had the
advantage of never revealing the sniper's nest. "These are intended to
cause the maximum amount of damage to a person," Dr Atari said. He
treated seven such patients yesterday.
As the Israeli and Palestinian leadership talked peace in Sharm
el-Sheik, another patient was rushed in. This time, it was Tamir
Barghouti, whose uncle had declared at the funeral of a Palestinian
gunman yesterday: "Our intifada is greater than Sharm el Sheik".
Tamir Barghouti, 23, had been shot through the abdomen and the bullet
lodged in his hip. "He might make it," Dr Atari told Marwan Barghouti,
who took the opportunity to announce to journalists outside the
operating theatre: "The talks in Egypt will fail. We support Mr
Arafat, but we wish he had not bothered to go. There is only one
solution, and that is to put an end to the Israeli occupation of
Palestine."
By sunset, the toll across the West Bank was two dead - a boy of 13
and a policeman - a 14-year old boy described as clinically dead, and
69 wounded.
