Bullet in the neck was only the start of the nightmare for ABC Adam Harvey

Getting shot was not the most frightening thing to happen to me in Marawi.

The terrifying moments came later, when I was transferred from a medical clinic on the edge of town to a hospital in the centre of the contested city, that then came under attack by Islamic State.

I was lying on a gurney, still a bit shocked at seeing an X-ray of my neck featuring a perfectly-formed M16 bullet lodged deep in the tissue, not too far off my spine.

As I was being pushed through the hospital, the gunfire began to get louder.

And then it became impossible to ignore the gunshots. The single cracks became loud crashes — like someone had dropped a metal tray beside us — then became sustained, heavy gunfire, the sounds bouncing off the interior walls of the hospitals as a platoon of soldiers stationed there began returning fire.

The doctor treating me paused for a moment. “Oh my God that is close,” she said, looking rattled, which in itself was a bit bracing.

A chaotic battle where snipers lurked in narrow streets

It would take quite a bit to unnerve the medical staff at the Amai Pakpak Hospital.

They’d been working in a battle zone for a month, since local Islamists aligned with IS took the city on May 23.

Plenty of civilians stayed — either to guard their homes, or because IS wouldn’t let them leave — and more wounded were coming in each day.

Philippine soldiers began running through the hospital, peering out through the windows to try to work out where the Islamists were.

Cameraman Phil Hemingway, who had continued filming since I was shot, dropped the camera for a moment and caught producer Geoff Thompson’s eye.

“We need to get out of here,” Phil said. Geoff nodded.

It was frightening and dangerous. But the whole city felt like this — confused and chaotic, with ‘safe zones’ turning out to be nothing of the sort.

The army controlled the roads leading to IS-held areas, but it was clear that the battle lines were porous, and snipers had got behind the government positions.

In this ghost town we were able to walk up to the army positions, often not knowing there was anyone there until we walked past a doorway and saw the soldiers sheltering inside the darkened two-storey buildings that crowded the city’s narrow streets, as some protection from constant sniper fire.

One young soldier clutched a 50-year-old M16 that could well have been used in the Vietnam War. A lot of surplus US Army equipment ends up in the Philippines.

“These guns are very bad,” he said. His weapon overheats after a few shots and then jams.

He had spare ammunition strapped to his chest, just in case the weapon kept going in a firefight, but he’d bought it all himself — the military forces its soldiers to buy their own spare ammunition.

“They have new guns,” he said, nodding towards the IS positions on the other side of the Agus River.

Source: The bullet in the neck was only the start of the nightmare for ABC correspondent Adam Harvey – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)