Young Brunette Girl With A Crossbow Weapon

In Europe, British based Barnett International supplied crossbows to Serbian forces which according to The Guardian were later used "in ambushes and as a counter-sniper weapon", against the Kosovo Liberation Army during the Kosovo War in the areas of Pec and Djakovica, south west of Kosovo. Whitehall launched an investigation, though the department of trade and industry established that not being "on the military list" crossbows were not covered by such export regulations. Paul Beaver of Jane's defence publications commented that, "They are not only a silent killer, they also have a psychological effect". On 15 February 2008 Serbian Minister of Defence Dragan Sutanovac was pictured testing a Barnett crossbow during a public exercise of the Serbian army's Special Forces in Nis, 200 km south of capital Belgrade. Special forces in both Greece and Turkey also continue to employ the crossbow. Spain's Green Berets still use the crossbow as well.
In Asia, Chinese armed forces use crossbows at all unit levels from traffic police to the special force Snow Leopard Commando Unit of the People's Armed Police and the People's Liberation Army. One justification for this comes in the crossbow's ability to stop persons carrying explosives without risk of causing detonation. Furthermore, during the Xinjiang riots of July 2009, crossbows were used alongside modern military hardware to quell protestors. The Indian Navy's Marine Commando Force were equipped until the late 1980s with crossbows supplied with cyanide-tipped arrows, as an alternative to suppressed handguns.