History
1980–1999
The 1983 Beirut barracks bombings killed 305 U.S. and French peacekeepers during the Lebanese Civil War with two truck bombs. The explosive mechanism was a gas-enhanced device consisting of compressed butane in canisters employed with Pentaerythritol tetranitrate to create a fuel-air explosive. [1] [2] The bomb was carried on a layer of concrete covered with a slab of marble to direct the blast upward. [3] Despite the lack of sophistication and wide availability of its component parts, a gas-enhanced device can be a lethal weapon. These devices were similar to fuel-air or thermobaric weapons, explaining the large blast and damage. [4]
In 1994, Hamas claimed responsibility for a car in Israel packed with nails and propane gas that exploded, killing the driver and seven people at a bus stop. [5]
During the Columbine High School massacre, Harris and Klebold planted two 20-pound (9.1 kg) propane bombs in the school cafeteria. The plan was to kill as many students as possible in the explosions and to shoot down survivors when they attempt to flee. Both bombs failed to detonate, so the two students opened fire anyway, killing 12 students and 1 teacher, and injuring 21 others before both committing suicide. Another 20-pound (9.1 kg) propane bomb was found south of the school, presumably as a diversionary device for the police. Other propane tanks were found in their cars, for use as car bombs.
2010–present
The 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt was an attempted terrorist attack using propane tanks in an improvised car bomb. The perpetrator Faisal Shahzad admitted that he had trained at a Pakistani terrorist training camp prior to the attack, [6] and said he wanted revenge against the United States for drone strikes in Pakistan. [7]
The 2012 Brindisi school bombing claimed the life of one 16-year-old female student and injured five others. It was originally blamed on the Mafia, but the confessing bomber revealed no convincing motive.
During November 2012, in Vancouver, a propane bomb was found on an elevated SkyTrain track, along with a second device. A passenger had spotted a red canister on the track which looked like small propane tanks with straps and wires. Canisters the size of a fire extinguisher were attached to an explosive device. [8] [9]
James Lee, armed with two starting pistols, a pipe bomb, four propane tanks and an oxygen tank, took three people hostage during the Discovery Communications headquarters hostage crisis, but Lee was shot dead by police. Lee's motive was believed to have been grounded in environmental activism. [10]
In 2016, a French Muslim teenager was arrested after attempting to ignite propane tanks in her car outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. [11]
In 2017, an Allah-Las concert in Rotterdam was canceled after Spanish police, investigating the Barcelona attacks, tipped off Dutch police of a plan to bomb the concert. [12] A white van containing 100 butane canisters was found near the concert.
In 2018 in Melbourne, Australia, a Somali terrorist ignited propane tanks in his car before stabbing three civilians and attempting to kill police officers. [13]
The Columbine High School massacre, commonly referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and attempted bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten of the twelve students killed were in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history, until it was surpassed by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, and later the Uvalde school shooting in May 2022, and the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history until the Parkland high school shooting in February 2018. Columbine still remains both the deadliest mass shooting and the deadliest school shooting to occur in the U.S. state of Colorado.
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.
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who perpetrated the Columbine High School massacre at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 in Columbine, Colorado. Harris and Klebold killed 12 students, one teacher, and wounded 24 others. After killing most of their victims in the school's library, they died by self-inflicted gunshot wounds. At the time, it was the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history.
Black Widow or Shahidka, is a term for Islamist Chechen female suicide bombers, willing to be a manifestation of violent jihad. They became known at the Moscow theater hostage crisis of October 2002. The commander Shamil Basayev referred to the shahidkas as a part of force of his suicide bombers called the Riyad-us Saliheen Brigade of Martyrs. Basayev also stated that he himself trained at least fifty of the Black Widows. The female suicide bombers have carried out over 65% of the 23 terrorist attacks linked to the Chechen movement since 2000. The Black Widows are associated with terrorist attacks in Chechnya between 1999 and 2005.
On 31 July 2006, two men placed two suitcases filled with bombs on regional commuter trains in Germany. Departing from the central station in Cologne, the bombs were timed to go off near Hamm or Dortmund and near Koblenz, and according to German investigators "would have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people ... on a much larger scale than the terrorist attacks on London subways and buses in July 2005." However, due to faulty construction, the bombs only failed to ignite, even as the detonators worked. According to the German prosecutor, at the time Germany had "never been closer to an Islamist attack than in this case."
The al-Khilani mosque bombing occurred on 19 June 2007 when a truck bomb exploded in front of the Shia Al-Khilani Mosque in Baghdad, Iraq. At least 78 people were killed and another 218 injured in the blast. The explosion occurred just two days after a four-day curfew banning vehicle movement in the city was lifted after the al-Askari Mosque bombing (2007), and just hours after 10,000 US troops began the Arrowhead Ripper offensive to the north of Baghdad. Because the site was a Shia mosque, the bombing is presumed to have been the work of Sunnis. The Sinak area where the explosion took place was also the targeted by a suicide car bomber on 28 May 2007, which resulted in 21 deaths.
On 29 June 2007, two car bombs in London were discovered and disabled before they could be detonated. The first device was left near the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket at around 01:30, and the second was left in Cockspur Street, located in close proximity to the nightclub.
The Glasgow Airport attack was a terrorist ramming attack which occurred on 30 June 2007, at 15:11 BST, when a dark green Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane canisters was driven at the glass doors of the Glasgow Airport terminal and set ablaze. The car's driver was severely burnt in the ensuing fire, and five members of the public were injured, none seriously. Some injuries were sustained by those assisting the police in detaining the occupants. A close link was quickly established to the 2007 London car bombs the previous day.
On 29–30 June 2007, two related terrorist incidents occurred in the United Kingdom. In the second incident, one of the two perpetrators was killed, while five civilians were injured, none of them seriously.
In the United States, a common definition of terrorism is the systematic or threatened use of violence in order to create a general climate of fear to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious, or ideological change. This article serves as a list and a compilation of acts of terrorism, attempts to commit acts of terrorism, and other such items which pertain to terrorist activities which are engaged in by non-state actors or spies who are acting in the interests of state actors or persons who are acting without the approval of foreign governments within the domestic borders of the United States.
This is a list of terrorist incidents in Pakistan in 2014.
On 4 September 2016, a car containing seven canisters of gas and pages with Arabic writing was found parked near Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral in Paris.
On 20 June 2017, a terrorist bomb caused a small explosion at Brussels-Central railway 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 municipality and who had assembled a defective explosive device.
Abdelbaki Es Satty was an imam in Ripoll who was born in Morocco in 1973 and arrived in Spain in 2002. On 21 August, he was confirmed to have died in an accidental explosion in Alcanar on 16 August, which began the 2017 Barcelona attacks. Satty is believed to have been the mastermind of the planned attacks and to have radicalised the twelve terrorists responsible into the Takfir wal-Hijra sect, which allows adherents to copy typically "Western" behaviour often forbidden in Islam in order to conceal their radicalisation and terror plans. However, he was also serving as an informant to Spain's intelligence agency, CNI.
The Columbine effect is the legacy and impact of the Columbine High School massacre, which occurred on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. The shooting has had an effect on school safety, policing tactics, prevention methods, and inspired numerous copycat crimes, with many killers taking their inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold by describing the two perpetrators as being martyrs or heroes.
Israa Jaabis is a Palestinian woman who was imprisoned in Israel from 2015 to 2023. Jaabis seriously injured herself and police officer Moshe Chen when she allegedly detonated a car bomb in 2015, according to Israeli authorities. Her family, however, claims that the fire originated from a fault in her car.
