Reports from the West Bank are coming out that an American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni’lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister on Friday, March 13, 2009.
Tristan Anderson from California, 37 years old, was taken to an Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv. Anderson was unconscious and had been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister.
The new gas canister that injured Anderson – the fourth member of the International Solidarity Movement to be killed or seriously injured by Israeli troops since the beginning of the Second Intifada – is fired at a much higher speed than the gas canisters and grenades deployed before.
Soldiers have been firing the canisters directly at protesters, sometimes from a few dozen meters, using the hard plastic-coated metal tubes as a weapon. According to eyewitnesses, the IDF were stationed on a hill overlooking the protest and the protest had already begun to disperse when a tear gas canister was fired directly at people. Tristan was not near any stone throwers or throwing stones himself.
The following is a video of the incident.
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