Sniper Killer of 11 Israeli Soldiers : Thaer Hamad's Father Video Interviewed

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Tuesday February 23, 2010 05:33

by TD - Free Palestine Campaign

"Fondly and proudly known as 'The Sniper,"

On 3rd March 2002, 22-year-old Palestinian blocklayer and tiler Thaer Hamad from the Ramallah-area village of Silwad, armed with an old WW2 M1 rifle shot 24 Israeli Occupation Forces and their reinforcements at a checkpoint sited in an old British police post on the road between Nablus and Ramallah killing 11 of them in the space of 24 minutes before his weapon blew up on the 25th shot.

Father of Thaer Hamad; Kayed

A Google search reveals a curious and bizarre lack of information on this extraordinary sharpshooter and the terrible damage he inflicted on the Israeli Occupation Forces in this singular action and when some is unearthed, it jars with the information provided by Thaer Hamad's family and Palestinians in Silwad and Bil'in familiar with the case such as the number of shots fired, who they hit and the number of casualties: Incredibly, the marksman’s 25 single shots, fired over 25 minutes, killed seven Israeli reservists and three settlers. Four others also suffered direct hits, but they survived (Paul McGeough : Kill Khalid, see Related Link)

As narrated to me by Palestinians, the story goes that after stealing away as his family slept and breaking the brunt of his journey through rough terrain and hills on horseback, he insinuated himself into his sniper position some 150 to 200 meters from the checkpoint, his gun which blew up on the 25th shot without injuring him was wiped clean of fingerprints and left before he slipped away. His shooting skills acquired from hunting game and prior deadly accuracy with a catapult were such that denied chest shots by reason of the IOF wearing body armour he had to go for head shots and the gap between their plates with one IOF soldier shot through the narrow surveillance slit in an armoured car. He was close enough to the checkpoint for the Israeli "settler" woman to hear his shouts to get herself and her two children away from the killing zone and what immeasurably helped him in disguising his position was the echoing and reechoing of tremendous, undirected, Israeli gunfire through the surrounding hills. Thaer Hamad, fondly and proudly known as "The Sniper" throughout Palestine was arrested on Oct 5th 2004 and is now serving multiple life sentences for his resistance to the Israeli occupation of his land - two, a Palestinian informed me, commuted for the mercy shown to the "settler" woman and her children.?

Thaer Hamad's mother; Rahma with her son Akram holding his own son, Thaer