Thursday, January 26, 2017

26-Jan-17: A Wednesday night Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack

The caption from this March 9, 2016 news photo
says these are "Guns used by two
Palestinians who carried out a shooting attack...
(Israel Police)"
Shortly after Wednesday night's vehicle-borne assault on Israelis standing at a bus-stop just outside northern Jerusalem [our post], a second murderous attack occurred in the same general area. Fortunately the outcome involved no serious injuries to those who were attacked.

From the Times of Israel report:
A Palestinian man opened fire at Israeli troops from a moving car in the central West Bank on Wednesday night, the army said. The soldiers fired back, and injured him. No soldiers were injured in the attack, which took place outside the village of Aboud, northwest of Ramallah. The Palestinian gunman received medical treatment on the scene, the army said. Inside the vehicle, the soldiers found a Carlo-style submachine gun, a makeshift weapon that is prevalent in the West Bank and in the Israeli underworld.
Here's some background about that submachine gun:
...One of the most notable symbols to emerge from six months of Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank has been the “Carlo,” otherwise known as the Carl Gustav submachine gun. The homemade or craft-produced rudimentary automatic weapon has been used in the majority of shooting attacks on Israeli civilians and security personnel. It’s not accurate and it has a limited range, but it’s cheap and more than powerful enough to cause mayhem and death — and it’s nearly impossible to prevent its production... “There has been an expanded effort to seize illegal weapons that pose a concrete and lethal threat to Israeli civilians and security forces,” an army spokesperson said. But nothing has been done so far to seriously curb the creation and proliferation of these homemade guns. While some more advanced rifles and firearms require specialized tools, the Carlo has remained so popular because of how little machinery and technical know-how is required to produce it, according to N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services (ARES), a specialized technical intelligence consultancy. A drill press, some welding equipment and blueprints from the internet are all that’s needed to create one of these potentially devastating weapons, a fact that presents a real challenge for Israel and countries around the world that are trying to prevent such guns from winding up in the hands of terrorists and criminals...  The Carlo, as it is known, derives its name from the Carl Gustav m/45 submachine gun, a design that was adopted by the Swedish army in 1945 and later licensed to Egypt, where units were sold under the names Port Said and Akaba, according to a forthcoming report... ["Say hello to ‘Carlo,’ the cheap, lethal go-to gun for terrorists", Times of Israel, March 16, 2016]
For a change, the Ma'an News Agency report eschews the use of "alleged" in its report of last night's terrorist attack, but calls what happened "an exchange of fire" between "Israeli forces" and a "Palestinian".

There's also a timely reminder of the ongoing nature of attacks like last night's in this brief report from Israel National News:
The Israel Defense Forces, Shabak Israel Security Agency and police carried out a widespread operation, Wednesday evening in Hevron, to seize a weapons factory in Hevron. The factory contained eight lathes for making weapons, which were dismantled. The operation was part of an ongoing campaign of nightly operations against weapons factories in Judea.
No one's suggesting this is the last or only Palestinian Arab gun-making workshop. More power to the IDF, the Shin Bet and the men and women of the Israel Police in their ever-vigilant efforts.

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