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Paramilitaries 'shooting through bones to maim'

There has been an increase in paramilitary style attacks with victims suffering 'life-changing' injuries
There has been an increase in paramilitary style attacks with victims suffering 'life-changing' injuries There has been an increase in paramilitary style attacks with victims suffering 'life-changing' injuries

A PARAMEDIC has warned that a brutal change in the way paramilitaries are shooting their victims – through the bone – is making their injuries much harder to treat and leaving them at risk of not walking again.

The experienced ambulance worker said the type of injuries they are seeing are “going back to the old days” of more extreme attacks associated with the the Provisional IRA, when shots were fired through the back of the leg and shattered bones.

“Over the past few years paramilitaries were shooting into the muscle and it didn’t hit the bone,” he told The Irish News. “It was more of an exercise of a slap on the wrist and the injuries weren’t too severe – but now it’s like the very old days when they are fracturing bones and leaving people in such a way they may not walk again.”

A leading doctor who treated two victims of paramilitary-style shootings at the weekend warned of the "absolutely catastrophic" impact of such attacks and the long-term mental health problems for patients.

Dr Duncan Redmill, an A&E consultant at the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast, provided care to two men who were shot within an hour of each other in the north and west of the city on Sunday evening.

The medic, who has a specialist interest in treating "trauma" patients, said that punishment shootings were "rife" and had become "more violent" in nature.

While he could not comment on the two cases specifically, he said there is the potential for similar attacks to cause "life-changing" injuries.

"I have seen around 100 paramilitary style attacks over the past 20 years from minor soft-tissue injuries through to fatal cases. I don't know if the attackers are intentionally trying to cause orthopaedic injuries...but I have seen cases where there can be long-term disability," said Dr Redmill.

"When they aim behind the knee it can be absolutely catastrophic and if they aim straight for the ankles they are intending to injure bones - and this is much more disabling.

"There are not just physical effects but long-term mental health effects which have an enormous cost to the victim and society."

Over the past 10 days there have been three paramilitary-style shootings in Belfast.

One of the victims in the west of the city was hit on the head with a hammer and shot five times in his legs and feet. Two men received multiple shots to their joints on Sunday in the separate attacks in Ballymurphy in the west and the New Lodge in the north.

Fr Martin Magill, who is part of the 'Stop Attacks' campaign group, said it was apparent the shootings were becoming "more brutal" in nature.

"Through my decades working in the west and north of the city I have always condemned these attacks. Through this group, which is made up of youth workers, academics and people with an interest, we are trying to lobby society and put pressure on those people who are doing this to stop," he said.

"One of my colleagues once officiated at a funeral where he was told it was a 'shooting that had gone wrong'. But as he said - when is a shooting ever right?"

Latest research shows that paramilitary-style shootings have doubled last year, with young people under the age of 18 being targeted by both loyalist and republican organisations.

Figures released before Christmas to coincide with United Nations' Universal Children's Day, show there were 28 paramilitary style shootings in the previous year - 25 of those carried out by republican groups and three by loyalist paramilitary organisations.