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Medics in Gaza report Israel forces using devastating 'butterfly bullet'

May 3, 2018 at 11:19 am

Palestinians carry an injured protester at the Gaza-Israel border as part of the fifth week of the Great March of Return on 27 April 2018 [Mohammad Asad / Middle East Monitor]

Medics on the ground in the occupied Gaza Strip have reported Israeli forces’ use of a devastating “butterfly bullet”, according to a report by Al Jazeera.

Twenty-four Palestinians “have had their limbs amputated since the March of Great Return mass protests started on March 30”, according to Al Jazeera.

Medics on the ground say Israeli forces are shooting at demonstrators with a new type of round – never seen before – known as the ‘butterfly bullet’, which explodes upon impact, pulverising tissue, arteries and bone, while causing severe internal injuries

the report said.

All 24 amputees were shot by Israeli snipers with a “single explosive bullet”, including journalists Yaser Murtaja and Ahmad Abu Hussein, both “shot in the abdomen”.

“All of their internal organs were totally destroyed, pulverised,” said Ashraf Al-Qidra, Gaza’s health ministry spokesperson. The bullets are the deadliest the Israeli army has ever used, he added.

“Normally, a regular bullet breaks the leg [upon impact]. But these bullets create massive wounds, indicating that an explosion happened inside the body. It’s an expanding bullet. It pulverises the leg, and the leg gets cut off [as a result],” Al-Qidra told Al Jazeera.

Read: Israel refuses to disclose open-fire policy for Gaza

Palestinians along the Gaza-Israel border reaffirm the ‘Right of Return’ and get shot by IOF - Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Palestinians along the Gaza-Israel border reaffirm the ‘Right of Return’ and get shot by IOF – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]