Posted on 06/29/2008 6:21:58 PM PDT by blam
French marines shoot children in bungled hostage display
By Our Foreign Staff
Last Updated: 11:39PM BST 29/06/2008
Seventeen people have been injured, including a child left in a critical condition, after French soldiers fired live bullets instead of blanks during an open day display.
Troops stand outside the barracks near Carcassone
Fifteen civilians and two soldiers were injured in the incident which involved a demonstration by members of a marines parachute regiment of hostage liberation exercises.
Four of the 17 were seriously injured, with two described as critical, following "incomprehensible" scenes at the barracks near Carcassone, in the country's south-west.
According to local authorities, five children who were watching the display were among those hurt. Five helicopters, 11 fire brigade first-aid vehicles and two ambulances rushed to the scene and ferried the injured to at least five hospitals.
One soldier had been detained last night. Although no explanation was immediately forthcoming for why the wrong ammunition was loaded into weapons, police said there was no suggestion it was a deliberate act. No information was available about what sort of weapons had been used
"All hypotheses are being considered," said a national police spokesman, adding that the weapons had been "seized and placed under lock and key."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he urgently awaited the results of a top-level military probe into the incident, adding that he "shares with the families the pain caused by this drama."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Didn’t Patton say something about “I’d rather have 12 German Divisions in front of me than one French Division behind me?”
Ach ya rab! That’s horrible.
Well, this is a reasonably accurate portrayal of what tends to happen in hostage rescue operations.
As the Special Ops guys say, “It sucks to be a hostage.”
OMG, how f****** stupid do you have to be to not know blanks from live rounds??? Especially when firing among civilians during a display???
Get some WD40 out and work the guitine lose, someone deserves to lose their head over this monumental screw-up.
That's amazing.
Usually the French throw their rifles down and run.
The French Islamic “youths” have nothing worry about.
They probably simulated surrender, threw their guns down, and they fired.
ThIs makes more sense.
This would be incredible incompetence, stupidity beyond belief, and wanton disregard for safety. Why would live amo be anywhere near the demonstration? I don't buy it.
Geez and people make Polish jokes.
I refuse to believe any explanation that claims accident .
Un-freaking-believably stupid!
Question number one for this guy should be: "Does your butt have to point in a particular direction when you pray?"
The French army has a large number of people from outside metropolitan France (read : North Africa).
“All hypotheses are being considered”
OK. I’ll ‘consider’ that it may have been a deliberate attack by one soldier, who purposely carried live ammo.
Whether for personal reasons, or religious (jihadi) reasons, remains to be seen.
But if for the latter, it will probably never be admitted.
Agree completely.
Pierre: "Oui. I think. Ze blanks, zey are for le combat. We would not want to chance making ze enemy mad. But ze civilians? Feh!"
yeah I’d have to consider the deliberate angle pretty seriously.
Hopefully with Sarkozy at the helm they will have a serious investigation, and not a whitewash that would be likely under Chirac.
Wouldn’t be too difficult to load magazines with blanks at the top and live rounds further down.
Definitely tagging this one for developments.
It may not have been an accident.
1) Troops are not allowed to keep live ammo in barracks so he had to be issued live ammo instead of blanks that day. 2) The soldier had to knowingly load the live ammo into his rifle instead of blanks, knowing he would be participating in a training exercise. 3)Blanks require a blank firing device attached to the rifle to get it to cycle. BFDs are painted bright red and its hard to not notice one is not installed during training. 4) The troop did not cease fire after the first one or two people dropped from being shot.
Most of the French jokes I know are about guys who don’t take baths sitting around drinking wine and eating stinky cheese while waving a white flag.
This is a joke, right? Right? I mean, I dislike the French as much as anyone ... but this HAS to be a joke. Right? Right?
An automatic rifle usually needs a blank adapter to fire blanks. It constricts the barrel to increase back pressure so the action can operate. You cannot fire live ammo through the blank adapter.
If there were a blank loaded on top of the magazine, the rifle wouldn’t cycle.
I’ve been through various live fire and simulated training sessions. Good practice always requires at least one other person check each firearm for clear and the correct, non-lethal ammunition. Usually, one other person checks the weapon, then the instructor makes a second check.
This would have to be an intentional act.
Agreed, although if the first round does not cycle the action then it’s up to the operator to clear the malf and continue. Have never tried it but am guessing the blank would be considered as such, although if a round did not cycle I would think squib and check the barrel before continuing. (But I would probably not check the next round in the mag)
Any idea what they were using? FAL’s or?
Hopefully there was a good video record of what was going on so they can sort things out.
Fully armed soldiers with live ammo against unarmed civilians, including children.....and NO ONE WAS KILLED! Only the French Army...
As others have stated: can’t see how this is an accident.
If they’re not using blank-adapters, they’re manually cycling after each round— which I doubt.
If they seized all the weapons after the fact, I’d be looking for clean or missing blank adapters, and checking spent brass for firing markings. -— and video footage for the guy(s) without the bright red assemblies on the ends of their rifles — can’t shoot live rounds through them.
I’d be surprised if they didn’t have the perp(s) in short order.
Too many mistakes on top of mistakes. It does seem deliberate. And if it was a rogue operator, none of his team was alert enough to catch the “mistake” at any level. Someone’s got a lot of ‘splaining to do.
Just read about this. Terrible
Amazing how that works!
The French are more concerned about trashing the legend of King Arthur than conducting a safe military display.
Yeah, this has to be deliberate. Even the Frogs can tell live from blanks.
I’m willing to be it was just one or two perps.
Yes that is a possibilty.
I am a civilian and have only been around guns for a year or so, but know enough to tell the difference between a blank and a live round.
Never seen a blank adapter fly off the end of a rifle?
The French use the FA-MAS rifle.
Yeah, if they are facing troops. As the article said these were civilians.
They are not afraid of unarmed civilians.
Firing blanks in a gas operated semi-auto takes a blank firing adapter. If you have one installed when you fire live rounds, at minimum the thing goes flying off the barrel, probably in pieces. A recoil operated weapon is even more problematic. Only a blowback operated weapon will not doe somthing totally nasty when set up to fire blanks, but fired with live rounds instead. Even with one of those, after the first shot, it will be obvious, obvious, that you've got live rounds.
Oh that is one ugly firearm.
Luckily, I’ve never seen that happen.
At the very least this incident was criminal negligence. Someone loaded a magazine with live ammunition and no one caught it.
Ah Hell, cut the French some slack...
This is the first victory they’ve had in generations.
Someone once asked me what the origin of "Polish" jokes was. The only explanation I could come up with is they are really jealous and have to denigrate something they see as superior so they can feel better about themselves.
I just wonder...who were they...and who was supposed to be there but might not have been.
Im betting this turns out to be revenge/grudge/or even assasination of some type. Some disgruntled frog gonna kill the generals wife etc.
I would think the safest way to construct a BFA would be to have it include a tube that ran the length of the barrel and would prevent a non-blank round from chambering fully. The tube would have a lost for the gas port, and would be plugged past that. It would have to be installed from the breach end, but field-stripping the rifle to install it shouldn't be a problem.
Any idea if any BFA's are designed like that?
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