Homemade guns used in Palestinian attacks on Israelis

Homemade guns produced by local gunsmiths in the West Bank are driving an increase in the use of firearms in attacks by Palestinians on Israelis.

In particular, the use of “Carl Gustav” or “Carlo” submachine guns – crudely manufactured in small metal shops and modelled on a Swedish weapon from the 1950s – has become increasingly apparent.

On Monday, such a gun was one of two weapons used in a attack on Israeli soldiers near Hebron, one of two car-ramming attacks (£) at the entrance to the southern West Bank Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba. Carl Gustav-style weapon have been used in many of the 68 shootings that have targeted Israelis since 1 October, when the current wave of violence began. Such a gun was also used in an attack in East Jerusalem last week that injured two Israeli policemen.

According to the Israeli domestic security service and Israel Defence Forces, dozens of homemade guns and items for gun fabrication have been seized in raids in recent months, most recently on Saturday when 15 rifles were discovered in a village near Jenin following the arrest of a gunsmith.

Video footage of that raid showed an officer from Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, removing guns wrapped in cloth and hidden behind plaster in the ceiling of a house.

Two weeks earlier a gunmaking workshop was uncovered near Nablus. It included guns, a metalworking lathe and ammunition.

The use of homemade guns shows how much the Palestinian Authority’s security forces and Palestinian factions have kept control over their large number of weapons.

A Carl Gustav and an improvised sniper rifle with a silencer made from an oil can were also seized during the arrest of two young brothers from Hebron accused of being behind a series of recent sniper attacks in which two soldiers and two civilians were wounded.

The original homemade Carl Gustav was first identified in 2000. That gun was a crude but effective weapon with a simple barrel welded into a tubular metal stock, with a straightforward grip and a spring-operated firing mechanism.

The weapon was cheap and relatively easy to produce and it was initially popular with Palestinian and Arab-Israeli criminals involved in drug trafficking and dealing on the West Bank.