Carlo (submachine gun)
submachine gun
The Carlo (Arabic: كارلو; [kar.lu]), also referred to as the Carl Gustav (Arabic: كارلوجستاف; [kar.lu.dʒis.taf]) is an improvised submachine gun manufactured by small workshops in the Palestinian territories. The design was inspired by and named after the Swedish Carl Gustaf m/45 and its Egyptian Port Said variant; however, the similarity is often only passing.
The weapon is used by various Palestinian militants, including Hamas's Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Al-Quds Brigades. It has also become popular with criminal groups in countries outside of the Levant, including in South American countries such as Brazil and Chile, Croatia, Ukraine, Italy, the Caribbean and Australia.
The Carlo's homemade nature makes it affordable on the black market, where it is purchased not only by Palestinians targeting Israelis, but also by Arab-Israeli gangs. The Carlo is cheap and requires little skill or equipment to manufacture, but it is inaccurate and prone to jamming and misfiring.
History
Throughout the 2000s, it was primarily made and used by Arab-Israeli gangs, meant to serve as a cheaper alternative to the AK-47 and the Tavor. Palestinian militants had started using it by 2014, as the IDF reported netting several Carlos in a raid on a Nablus arms cache.
It gained widespread use during the 2015–2016 wave of violence in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; according to The Guardian, it was used in up to 68 attacks during this period. Among the most notable include the death of Hadar Cohen and the June 2016 Tel Aviv shooting.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carlo (submachine gun)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.