Last Updated: Wednesday, 19 February, 2003, 14:28 GMT Grandmother hurt in Israeli violence http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2780047.stm Mrs Gwynne was shot at while in the old quarter of Nablus A Welsh woman has been shot at and injured by Israeli troops in the West Bank while trying to help people to hospital.
Anne Gwynne, 65, from Aberystwyth, was hit in the leg by shrapnel while carrying a stretcher through the old quarter of the besieged town of Nablus.
She said two soldiers opened fire on her and a colleague after they failed to hear an order for them to halt as they were trying to reach a heavily pregnant Palestinian woman.
Her ambulance driver was hit in the hand and Mrs Gwynne was left bleeding after being hit by a piece of flying metal but has told News Online she was not seriously hurt.
She said: "We were being chased by three soldiers.
"We didn't hear them, in the first place, and they were speaking in Hebrew, not English.
"They didn't repeat it, they simply shot at us."
Mrs Gwynne is an ambulance volunteer in the West Bank
Despite being injured, she and her Palestinian colleague eventually reached the woman and were able to take her to hospital, a process that took about an hour-and-a-half.
The grandmother and former teacher said she believed the two Israeli Defence Force soldiers who fired at them, from about 50m, were trying to kill her colleague and only the narrow, curving alleyway saved her from more serious harm.
"I think I was just lucky. They have not shot so close at "internationals" before - they have at checkpoints but not in an enclosed space.
Mrs Gwynne travelled to the Middle East trouble spot seven weeks ago to work for a Jerusalem-based medical organisation which helps carry injured civilians across Israeli checkpoints.
She said she was spurred into volunteering for the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees after one of her daughters, who was studying at an American university, was warned she would not be awarded her PhD unless she gave up campaigning for the Palestinian cause.
Witness
As well as risking her life on the streets of the West Bank, Mrs Gwynne also writes for the pro-Palestinian website, Ramallah Online.
She said: "I came out here to see and ended up writing
"It's like a lawless frontier, like the wild west - there is no law except who-has-the-guns-have-the-law."
"It's like Hell here, there are tanks firing on children."
Part of her role as a witness on behalf of the Palestinians to events around her include drawing up a dossier of incidents including deaths, property destruction and theft.
""Every day, you could be shot just for being here.
"It's a funny thing, you just get used to it - we don't accept is as normal, because if we do we've lost - but at the same time we just get on with it."
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