Iranian sniper rifles. AK-47 assault rifles from China and Russia. North Korean- and Bulgarian-built rocket-propelled grenades. Anti-tank rockets secretly cobbled collectively in Gaza.
An Related Press evaluation of greater than 150 movies and pictures taken within the three months of fight since Hamas launched its Oct 7 shock assault on Israel exhibits the militant group has amassed a various patchwork arsenal of weapons from around the globe a lot of it smuggled previous a 17-year blockade that was aimed toward stopping simply such a army buildup.
These weapons have proved lethal throughout weeks of intense city warfare in Gaza, the place Hamas fighters are sometimes armed solely with what they’ll carry and make use of hit-and-run techniques towards lopsided Israeli benefits in arms and know-how. Hamas propaganda movies posted over the previous few weeks seem to point out the shootings of Israeli troopers recorded by way of the scopes of sniper rifles.
We’re looking in all places for weapons, for political assist, for cash, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad just lately mentioned in an interview with the AP, declining to debate particularly who has been offering its weapons or how they had been snuck into Gaza.
Consultants who reviewed the pictures for AP had been in a position to determine distinguishing options and markings that present the place most of the weapons wielded by Hamas fighters had been manufactured.
However such an evaluation doesn’t present proof of whether or not they had been supplied by the governments of these international locations or bought in a thriving Center East black market, with weapons and parts listed on the market on social media in such war-torn international locations as Iraq, Libya and Syria.
What is evident, nevertheless, is that most of the photographs present Hamas militants toting weapons that look like comparatively new, proof the group has discovered methods of getting arms previous the air-and-sea blockade of the Gaza Strip presumably by boat, by way of tunnels or hid in shipments of meals and different items.
The vast majority of their arms are of Russian, Chinese language or Iranian origin, however North Korean weapons and people produced in former Warsaw Pact international locations are additionally current within the arsenal, mentioned N R Jenzen-Jones, an professional in army arms who’s director of the Australian-based Armament Analysis Companies.
Regardless of the build-up, Israel maintains an enormous benefit, with a robust array of contemporary tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships and an air power of US-made fighter jets. Israel’s army says it has killed greater than 7,000 Hamas militants, in comparison with the deaths of at the least 510 of its personal troopers, greater than 330 of whom had been killed in Hamas’ preliminary assault. The Well being Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says greater than 23,000 Palestinians have died within the combating, although it doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Imagery reviewed by the AP confirmed a Hamas arsenal that includes weapons starting from small arms and machine weapons to shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and craft-produced anti-tank projectiles.
Among the many most distinctive is the outsized AM-50 Sayyad (Arabic for hunter), an Iranian-made a sniper rifle that fires a .50- caliber spherical highly effective sufficient to punch by way of as much as an inch of metal. It has beforehand been noticed on battlefields in Yemen, Syria, and within the fingers of Shia militias in Iraq.
Hamas fighters have additionally been seen carrying an array of Soviet-era weapons which have been copied and manufactured?in Iran and China. They embody variants of the Russian-designed 9M32 Strela, a transportable heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile system.
Jenzen-Jones mentioned a grip inventory on one of many missile launchers a fighter was seen holding is distinctive to a variant manufactured in China and utilized by the Iranian army and its allies, together with Hezbollah in Lebanon, a gaggle intently aligned with Hamas.
Weapons recovered from Hamas fighters by the Israel Protection Forces embody what look like Italian-designed TC/6 anti-tank mines. Nonetheless, Sen Moorhouse, a former British Military officer and explosive ordinance disposal professional, mentioned it too had been copied by Iran’s arms trade.
The Israel Defence Forces and US officers have lengthy accused Iran of supplying cash, coaching and weapons to Hamas and allied militants in Gaza, together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Iranian representatives on the United Nations didn’t reply to emails from the AP about whether or not their authorities equipped weapons to Hamas, together with AM-50 Sayyad sniper rifles. Nonetheless, per week after AP sought remark, Hamas posted a video purporting to point out militants in Gaza utilizing machining tools to make their very own copies of the rifle.
Grasp gunsmith Don Fraley reviewed that Dec 20 video and mentioned it could be practically unattainable for Hamas to fabricate a protected and correct .50-caliber sniper rifle with the rudimentary tools proven.
You are going to must be a rock star at machine store work. And I did not see any of that,” mentioned Fraley, a former US Military Particular Forces soldier and sniper for the Kentucky State Police. “These of us are simply attempting to cowl their tracks.
An Israeli army official accustomed to Hamas’ arsenal mentioned the group makes use of a mix of smuggled off-the-shelf weaponry, together with AK-47s, RPGs and anti-aircraft missiles, in addition to a big assortment of home-grown weapons typically made with simply accessible civilian supplies.
For example, the official mentioned, the group makes use of lathes to form steel into rockets and mortars, and matches them with explosives manufactured from fertilizers. Different home-made weapons embody a launcher able to firing 14 rockets concurrently and the Zuwari drone, an explosives-laden plane that was used to strike Israeli statement towers and knock out cameras on Oct 7.
There’s a large army/protection trade contained in the Gaza Strip, mentioned the official, who spoke on situation of anonymity beneath army briefing guidelines.
The official mentioned a lot of the smuggled weapons are believed to have been introduced in by way of Egypt and are typically simple to buy and didn’t have to be equipped by the nation of origin.
One such weapon seen within the fingers of Hamas fighters is a model of Chinese language machine weapons often called the Kind 80, a mannequin that has additionally been copied by the Iranians and renamed because the PKM-T80.
Jonathan Ferguson, the curator of firearms on the Royal Armouries Museum in England, mentioned from what he may see from the pictures and movies, variations of the gun made in China and Iran had been so related as to be indistinguishable.
Ferguson was additionally in a position to determine a rocket-propelled grenade with marks exhibiting it was made in Bulgaria. AP beforehand reported Hamas used RPGs with a particular purple stripe indicating they had been made in North Korea.
Among the many extra subtle Hamas home-grown weapons is a replica of a Russian anti-tank rocket known as the PG-7VR, which is particularly designed to defeat reactive-armor methods like these used on Israel’s Merkava Mark VI predominant battle tanks. Such tanks are lined with explosive-filed plates that explode outwards to disrupt incoming projectiles.
In propaganda movies posted in October, masked militants are seen assembling a model of the Russian rocket that Hamas has renamed the Al-Yasin 105, in honor of the group’s founder killed in an Israeli air strike in 2004.
Whereas the unique Russian model can soften by way of as much as two toes of metal armour, specialists say it is not clear whether or not the home-brewed explosives within the Hamas knock-off are as potent.
Hamas has posted a number of movies of fighters firing the rockets at Israeli tanks and armoured private carriers. These movies are sometimes lower off after the warhead explodes, making it unattainable to independently confirm whether or not the goal was destroyed.
Additionally, in a tactic borrowed from the battlefields of Ukraine, Hamas seems to have obtained or copied Iranian-designed drones that pack warheads that explode when crashed into their targets. Off- the-shelf, Chinese language-made quadcopter drones have additionally been tailored to drop explosives on tanks and troops.
The provision of economic off-the-shelf unmanned aerial automobiles, these mild shopper drones, has radically modified warfare lately, Jenzen-Jones mentioned. We have seen them, clearly, in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq, in Ukraine, and now in Gaza.
