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Friendly Fire (Version France)

Quote:

PARIS, France (AP) -- A military shooting demonstration in southeast France on Sunday left 16 people wounded, including children, when real bullets were used instead of blank ones, officials said.
Four of the wounded were in serious condition, including a 3-year-old child, Bernard Lemaire, chief of the regional administration in Aude, said on France-3 television. Fifteen of the injured were civilians.
A Defense Ministry official said the incident occurred during a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks. The official said investigators will look into why real bullets were used.
No information was immediately available about what kind of weapon was used.
The soldier who fired the shots has been detained, Lemaire said. He said the injuries were likely an accident but that it could have been a "criminal act."
In a statement, President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his "horror" at Sunday's incident at the base, which houses the 3rd marine infantry parachute regiment.
The injured were taken to nearby hospitals, with the most seriously wounded taken to Toulouse.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe....ap/index.html

Quite the same situation has happened back to my country and it was officer on duty in armory that messed up types of amunitions giving real ones instead of rubber shotgun rounds

Criminal act or not, it's sad that these things happen.

Bizarre incident. I'm surprised that civilians were the ones injured. I would think they'd have been kept well out of the way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mattk (Post 838411)

Bizarre incident. I'm surprised that civilians were the ones injured. I would think they'd have been kept well out of the way.

Uhm - bullets have a way of moving in a relatively straight line ;)

Well, generally when firing at something, one is, in theory, aiming. So I find it distressing that civilians were in the theoretical line of fire for this demonstration.

So were all 16 shots fired by one guy??? If so, you'd think he'd have figured things out a bit sooner, unless he was firing an automatic weapon (or a semi-auto or burst type gun very rapidly to cover an area) or something. Shots hitting the crowd just don't seem well-aimed in any case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 79TA (Post 838446)

If the demo was supposed to be done with blanks, and the observers were on more than one side to see "the whole show", then observers could easily have been in the line of fire.

Poor safety planning obviously... sad situation.