IDF confiscates a 'dragon' musket in West Bank

Soldiers discover vintage pistol in Hebron during nighttime sweep, arrest two senior Hamas men

Israeli troops arrested 16 Palestinian suspects, including two senior Hamas members, in raids around the West Bank Tuesday night and seized what appears to be an antique muzzle-loaded blunderbuss from a house in Hebron, the army said.

Waspi Kabaha and Rafat Nasif were picked up for the affiliation with the Hamas terror organization, while the rest are suspected of so-called popular terrorism, a catch-all term used by the Israel Defense Forces for rock throwing, violent demonstrations and other minor offenses.

Kabaha, a former Hamas minister of prisoners, was arrested from his home in Jenin, according to the Ynet news site. Nasif, a senior member of the organization, has been in and out of Israeli prisons for decades. He was picked up in Nablus.

While on a raid in Hebron, soldiers from the Nahal Infantry Brigade uncovered the vintage flintlock musket and confiscated it. The dragon, which is the technical term for a blunderbuss pistol, was “handed over to security forces,” the army said in a statement.

It was not clear if the dragon seized by Nahal soldiers was still in working condition, an IDF spokesperson said.

Wow. Look what our forces found last night in #Hebron. If a trigger could tell stories. pic.twitter.com/TJqdkiRgLG

— Lt. Col. (R) Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) May 18, 2016

Blunderbusses, which were used primarily in the 18th century, feature a smooth bore, making them highly inaccurate, and can only be loaded with one round at a time. In order to reload the weapon, a shooter needs to clean the gun, reload it with gunpowder by hand and then a new cotton-wrapped bullet is pushed down the barrel with a ramrod.

Its slow reloading and inaccuracy forced the blunderbuss out of use by the mid-19th century.

The 16 Palestinians arrested overnight came from villages and cities around the West Bank, including Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, Abu Dis, Beit Fajjar, Beit Umar and the Palestinian village of Tekoa, which is adjacent to a Jewish settlement of the same name.