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An explosive belt (also called suicide belt or a suicide vest) is an improvised explosive device, a belt or a vest packed with explosives and armed with a detonator, worn by suicide bombers. Explosive belts are usually packed with ball bearings, nails, screws, bolts, and other objects that serve as shrapnel to maximize the number of casualties in the explosion.
The Chinese used explosive vests during the Second Sino-Japanese War. [1] [2] A Chinese soldier detonated a grenade vest and killed 20 Japanese at Sihang Warehouse. Chinese troops strapped explosives like grenade packs or dynamite to their bodies and threw themselves under Japanese tanks to blow them up. [3] This tactic was used during the Battle of Shanghai, where a Chinese suicide bomber stopped a Japanese tank column by exploding himself beneath the lead tank, [4] and at the Battle of Taierzhuang, where Chinese troops rushed at Japanese tanks and blew themselves up with dynamite and grenades. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] During one incident at Taierzhuang, Chinese suicide bombers destroyed four Japanese tanks with grenade bundles. [10] [11]
The use of suicidal attacks to inflict damage upon an enemy predates the Second World War, in which Kamikaze units (suicidal air attacks) and Kaiten ("living torpedoes") were used to attack Allied forces. Japanese soldiers routinely detonated themselves by attacking Allied tanks while carrying antitank mines, magnetic demolition charges, hand grenades and other explosive devices.
The explosive belt usually consists of several cylinders filled with explosive (de facto pipe bombs), or in more sophisticated versions with plates of explosive. The explosive is surrounded by a fragmentation jacket that produces the shrapnel responsible for most of the bomb's lethality, effectively making the jacket a crude, body-worn, Claymore mine. Once the vest is detonated, the explosion resembles an omnidirectional shotgun blast. The most dangerous and the most widely used shrapnel are steel balls 3–7 mm (1⁄8–9⁄32 in) in diameter. [12] Other shrapnel material can be anything of suitable size and hardness, most often nails, screws, nuts, and thick wire. Shrapnel is responsible for about 90% of all casualties caused by this kind of device.
A "loaded" vest may weigh between 5 and 20 kilograms (10 and 45 lb) and may be hidden under thick clothes, usually jackets or snow coats.
A suicide vest may cover the entire stomach and usually has shoulder straps.
A common security procedure against suspected suicide bombers is to move the suspect at least 15 metres (50 ft) away from other people, then ask them to remove their upper clothing. While this procedure is relatively uncontroversial for use on males, it may cause an issue when dealing with females suspected of being suicide bombers. Male security personnel may be reluctant to inspect or strip-search females, and can be accused of sexual harassment after having done so. [13] Alternatively, an infrared detector can be used. There are assertions that using a millimeter wave scanner would be viable for the task, but the concept has been disputed.
The discovery of remains as well as incidentally unexploded belts or vests can offer forensic clues to the investigation after the attack. [14]
Suicide bombers who wear the vests are often obliterated by the explosion; the best evidence of their identity is the head, which often remains relatively intact because it is separated and thrown clear off the body by the explosion. Journalist Joby Warrick conjectured: "The vest's tight constraints and the positioning of the explosive pouches would channel the energy of the blast outward, toward whoever stood directly in front of him. Some of that energy wave would inevitably roll upward, ripping the bomber's body apart at its weakest point, between the neck bones and lower jaw. It accounts for the curious phenomenon in which suicide bombers' heads are severed clean at the moment of detonation and are later found in a state of perfect preservation several metres away from the torso's shredded remains." [15]
A car bomb, bus bomb, van bomb, lorry bomb, or truck bomb, also known as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), is an improvised explosive device designed to be detonated in an automobile or other vehicles.
A pipe bomb is an improvised explosive device (IED) that uses a tightly sealed section of pipe filled with an explosive material. The containment provided by the pipe means that simple low explosives can be used to produce a relatively large explosion due to the containment causing increased pressure. The fragmentation of the pipe itself creates potentially lethal shrapnel.
An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mechanism. IEDs are commonly used as roadside bombs, or homemade bombs.
Stielhandgranate is the German term for "stick hand grenade" and generally refers to a prominent series of World War I and World War II–era German stick grenade designs, distinguished by their long wooden handles, pull cord arming and cylindrical warheads. The first models were introduced by the Imperial German Army during World War I and the final design was introduced during World War II by the German Wehrmacht.
A nail bomb is an anti-personnel explosive device containing nails to increase its effectiveness at harming victims. The nails act as shrapnel, leading almost certainly to more injury in inhabited areas than the explosives alone would. A nail bomb is also a type of flechette weapon. Such weapons use bits of shrapnel to create a larger radius of destruction.
A suicide weapon is a weapon designed to be used in a suicide attack, typically based on explosives.
In June 2000, the North Caucasian Chechen separatist-led Chechen insurgents added suicide bombing to their tactics in their struggle against Russia. Since then, there have been dozens of suicide attacks within and outside the republic of Chechnya, resulting in thousands of casualties among Russian security personnel and civilians. The profiles of the suicide bombers have varied, as have the circumstances surrounding the bombings.
A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the use of explosives, where the attackers have accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout history, often as part of a military campaign, and more recently as part of Islamic terrorist campaigns. Although generally not regulated under international law by themselves, many suicide attacks violate international laws of war such as perfidy or targeting civilians.
A bra bomb is a bomb worn by women suicide bombers. Hiding the explosives in a bra instead of a vest allows for the women to show their midriffs when searched. In 2007 a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber had explosives hidden in her bra. She blew herself up outside the office of a Tamil minister.
The Baghdad police recruitment centre bombing was a suspected suicide bombing in the city of Baghdad, Iraq, that killed 28 people on 8 March 2009. The attack occurred at 10 am local time (UTC+3) in the centre of a crowd outside the police recruitment centre building. Most of the dead were police recruits; others were civilians and serving officers. There were a further 57 injuries. The death toll is the highest reported incident in Iraq for nearly one month.
This is a list of terrorist incidents in Iraq during 2010. Major attacks include a 1 February attack killing 54 in Baghdad, and a 10 May attack killed 45 at a fabrics factory in Hillah.
An anti-tank grenade is a specialized hand-thrown grenade used to defeat armored targets. Although their inherently short range limits the usefulness of grenades, troops can lie in ambush or maneuver under cover to exploit the limited outward visibility of the crew in a target vehicle. Hand launched anti-tank grenades became redundant with the introduction of standoff rocket propelled grenades and man-portable anti-tank systems.
These are the list of Terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2010.
This is a list of terrorist incidents in Pakistan in 2014.
The October 2013 Volgograd bus bombing was a suicide bombing which occurred on 21 October 2013 in the city of Volgograd, in the Volgograd Oblast of Southern Russia. The attack was perpetrated by a female suicide bomber and Islamic extremist named Naida Sirazhudinovna Asiyalova, who detonated an explosive belt inside a bus carrying approximately 40 people—predominantly students. The bombing killed seven civilians and injured at least 41 others.
On 20 June 2017, a terrorist bomb caused a small explosion at Brussels Central Station in Brussels, Belgium; there were no casualties. Soldiers patrolling the station subsequently killed the suspect with three to four shots, according to eyewitnesses. The perpetrator was Oussama Zariouh, a 36-year-old Moroccan national who lived in the Molenbeek district of Brussels and who had assembled a defective explosive device.
On August 1, 2017, two suicide bombers entered a Shi'ite mosque named "Jadwadia" in Herat, Afghanistan, during an evening prayer session. After throwing explosives into the crowd, one of the two men detonated his vest. The remaining attacker continued firing on the crowd before detonating his vest as well. The attack caused 33 deaths and left 66 people injured. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
On 26 April 2019, Sri Lankan security forces and National Thowheeth Jama'ath militants linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant clashed when the security forces raided a house in the town of Sainthamaruthu in Ampara District at around 7:30 pm. The house had been used by the militants to manufacture explosives and suicide vests. Three suicide bombers blew themselves up, killing nine of their family members, including six children, while four other suspects where shot dead by the soldiers. A civilian was killed and two others were injured during the crossfire.
On 24 September 2015, a double suicide bombing was carried out by Islamic State at a mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, killing at least 25 people.
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