Left: Israeli Cobra helicopters, seen through the patio window of the apartment building on which they had unleashed their explosive fire. Photo by Nigel Parry.

The bullets fired by the guns attatched to the nose of these attack helicopters, are called rasass khamis miya ("'500' bullets") by the Palestinians, a reference to the long bullet belts. The high explosive bullets are fired from a 20mm turreted cannon mounted inside the nose of the helicopter.

This apartment building was the same one from which Palestinian Police had fired at the Israeli snipers in the previous entry. Although they had fired from the car park outside and from the roof, the whole building was strafed by the helicopter.

Right: The entire second floor patio of the family home, stretching the length of two of these windows, was raked with bullets. The family, including a baby and five-year-old, were luckily unharmed. Photo by Nigel Parry.

Bullets entered the family bedroom as well, through a roll-down metal screen. When the firing had begun, the family had taken cover inside their house.

A neighbour who walked out his front door into the inside stairwell was hit in the head by shrapnel from one of the Cobra helicopter's explosive bulletsas he walked past an A4/letter-sized window, opening onto the roof. Fortunately, the head injury was not serious.

Left: The owner of the house explained how the bullets had ripped apart objects outside and damaged a section of the wall (right). Photo by Nigel Parry

Having arrived just after the attack, having friends tell me how it happened, looking at the physical evidence of it, and hearing these residents tell me their bemused stories, I was left with a very strange feeling. The last time Ramallah came under fire from real 'war machines' was during the 1967 War. That this had just happened again, 30 years later, was almost inconceivable.

It was like watching a movie about Beirut where neighbourhoods and streets, not hillsides and plains, were the frontlines. This photo of the resident, holding up plastic garden chairs, is almost funny.

Of course bullets are going to decimate these familliar flimsy objects. What is powerful about them in this photo is their very presence in the scene, a motif from family barbeque life being held up as proof that the stormclouds of war passed this way.

Right: The owner points to a concrete outhouse, perforated like swiss cheese by the attack helicopter. Photo by Nigel Parry.

This gave me pause for thought. I was used to thinking of anything vaguely stonelike as providing at least some cover. Anyone who had been hiding in this at the time would not only have had to deal with the explosive bullets and their fragments, but concrete shards as well. The ground in this and the previous photo was carpetted with them

Left: If all that wasn't enough, this photo shows where a bullet from the helicopter sliced through part of the heavy metal door on the outhouse (the big round hole). Photo by Nigel Parry

The whole bullet measures about 10cm long, is very heavy, and also explosive, as suggested by their hollow and fragmented debris, that often folds open outwards. See next entry for closer pictures of the rounds.