Suicide bombing

“ The truck bombing of the residential building occupied by US military personnel participating in the Joint Task Force/Southwest Asia near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on 25 June killed 19 US citizens and wounded over 500 persons. Several groups claimed responsibility, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Saudi Government continue their investigations into the incident.
In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, suicide bombs in February and March killed 65 persons, including three US citizens. ”

“ Was transferred to Kuwait in 2005 and subsequently conducted a suicide bombing attack in Mosul, Iraq in April 2008. Three suicide bombers struck in Mosul on April 26, 2008, killing 7 people. Al-Ajmi had returned to Kuwait following his release from Guantanamo Bay and traveled to Iraq via Syria. ”

“ It is particularly unfortunate that the Experts seem to think that conflict in which innocent civilians are killed by LTTE suicide bombers is simply something that deflects attention from ‘the impunity which has been allowed to go unabated throughout Sri Lanka’. They do not seem to realize that death and wanton destruction are serious. ”

“ For our terrorist enemies, violence is not only justified, it is necessary and even glorified—judged the only means to achieve a world vision darkened by hate, fear, and oppression. They use suicide bombings, beheadings, and other atrocities against innocent people as a means to promote their creed. ”

“ KSM followed a rather tortuous path to his eventual membership in al Qaeda.1 Highly educated and equally comfortable in a government office or a terrorist safehouse, KSM applied his imagination, technical aptitude, and managerial skills to hatching and planning an extraordinary array of terrorist schemes. These ideas included conventional car bombing, political assassination, aircraft bombing, hijacking, reservoir poisoning, and, ultimately, the use of aircraft as missiles guided by suicide operatives. ”

“ In the aftermath of the attacks, the United States formed the Global Coalition Against Terrorism.
Downtown Jerusalem Bombing, December 2, 2001: Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in downtown Jerusalem killing ten people and wounding more than 130. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Haifa Bus Attack, December 3, 2001: A Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up on a public bus in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens of others. ”

“ The Experts should recognize that, where ruthless terrorism may strike at any stage, with massive loss of life to civilians, it makes no sense not to recognize where responsibility for the plight of civilians lies. ”

“ It was in the midst of such commitment that the suicide bomber struck. Yolanda may well believe, as we all do, that the lives of civilians should be sacrosanct, but her abject failure to spare a thought for the soldiers killed so unexpectedly in the midst of humanitarian work is also horrifying. ”

“ Were it not for the combined efforts of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, the suicide bomb attacks that he and others planned would have been devastating,” said Assistant Attorney General Monaco. “I thank the many agents, analysts and prosecutors who helped bring about today’s result. ”

“ If a weapon be found near to the body, its position should be noted, and if in the hand, the firmness of the grasp—cadaveric spasm—should be recorded. All clothing should be carefully examined, and the relation of cuts and body wounds noted. All blood-stains on the clothing should be examined and described.
Multiple bullet wounds denote homicide, but suicides have been known to inflict more than one wound. It is strong evidence of suicide if the gun or pistol has burst by the explosion, as suicides have a predilection for overloading the weapon employed. ”

“ We are not engaged in a traditional battle with a nation-state, but with a worldwide, hydra-headed enemy, who lurks in the shadows conspiring to reproduce the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and who has boasted of sending suicide bombers into civilian gatherings, has proudly distributed videotapes of beheadings of civilian workers, and has tortured and dismembered captured American soldiers. ”

“ The bullet had fractured the skull and caused concussion of the brain, but the latter organ had not been penetrated, the missile having glanced from the bone in consequence of the slanting position of the forehead at the moment of fire.
“I think it right to tell you,” the doctor said at parting, “that while the patient’s life may possibly be saved, his reason will probably be endangered. Do you think the young man intended to commit suicide?” he added by way of inquiry, as his last remark was received in silence. ”

“ Three suicide bombers of Hamas detonated bombs in the Ben Yehuda shopping mall in Jerusalem, killing eight persons, including the bombers, and wounding nearly 200 others. A dual U.S./ Israeli citizen was among the dead, and seven U.S. citizens were wounded. ”

“ A man who shoots, hangs, poisons, or drowns himself may be sane; but the man who crucifies himself, buries himself alive, cuts his throat on a barbed-wire fence, or climbs into the top of a tree to take poison, is evidently on the border-line of insanity, even if he be not a recognized lunatic.
The most prevalent methods of suicide in Europe are, first, hanging, second, drowning. In the United States they are, first, poisoning, second, shooting. About three fourths of all the persons who commit suicide in the United States use pistol or poison. ”

“ They are moral monsters, but they are also a disciplined, dedicated movement driven by an apocalyptic religious zeal, which celebrates martyrdom and murder, has access to science, technology and mass communications, and is determined to acquire and use against us and our allies weapons of mass destruction. The institutions that sustained us throughout the Cold War and the doctrine of deterrence we relied on are no longer adequate to protect us in a struggle where suicide bombers might obtain the world's most terrifying weapons. ”

“ On the same day our civilians were killed in Benghazi, a Turkish police officer was murdered in Istanbul only days before his wedding; more than 10 Yemenis were killed in a car bomb in Sana’a; several Afghan children were mourned by their parents just days after they were killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul. ”

“ I lay in bed hanging onto the pillows and listened to the crash of the bombs, and the screams of the wounded. I hope I will never hear the like again. One of the bombs came through the tent I was in, but didn't explode. The minute the Huns were gone the doctors and nurses were around looking after the boys, soothing those who were shaken and attending the ones who were injured. There was no excuse for the bombing of this hospital; it was plainly marked with the Red Cross, and no one could mistake it for an ammunition dump. ”

“ More extraordinary still is his suggestion that in the dynamite explosion a dog or a quarter of beef might as well have been employed as a suicide-minded man; that, in short, the man may not have killed himself at all, but might have employed a presumption of such an occurrence to render more effective a physical persecution ending in murder by the living man who had posed as a spirit. ”

“ It is almost amusing to hear how these suicides déterminés vary, from day to day or week to week, the methods which they have selected for their own destruction—poison, pistols, drowning, throwing themselves out of window or under a train—nothing comes amiss; but, when they wish to be really effective, and carry terror into the hearts of their hearers, they usually declare either, that they will blow their brains out, or cut their throats. ”

“ On the contrary, those who have extensively researched this issue conclude that the #1 reason suicide terrorists attack anywhere in the world is because their land is occupied by a foreign military power. ”

“ At such a time it is good to drive through the fields in a comfortable calash or to be rowing on the lake.... But we went into the house.... There another sort of poetry was awaiting us.
V
A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in the holy days of spring and youth, there is no name in man's vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. ”

“ These panels had been constructed by international agreement, so that every country could know that it would be suicide to use atom bombs in war. Suicide for all. Afterwards there would be nothing but isolated bands of wandering savages, without the rudiments of civilization. ”

“ Towards sundown the occupants of the various bomb-proofs used to emerge and sit on the steps or the sandbags of their shelters, conversing with their neighbours and discussing the day's damage. All of a sudden the bell would tinkle, and down would go all the heads, just as one has often seen rabbits on a summer evening disappear into their holes at the report of a gun. In a few minutes, when the explosion was over, they would bob up again, to see if any harm had been done by the last missile. ”

“ But enough of them struck the ground on the cemetery and exploded there, to scatter death and destruction among the men immediately around, and to shatter gravestones and blow up ammunition caissons. But as most of them flew over us, rushing, screaming, whirring, and as they burst above, and sent down their deadly fragments, they added to the hellish din a peculiarly malicious noise of their own. How would the men endure this frightful experience? One of the hardest trials of the courage and steadfastness of the soldier is to stand still and be shot at without being able to reply. ”

“ The man heaves his bomb over a parapet at a dummy dressed in German uniform. The whistle blows and we all duck. There is a terrific explosion like a small cannon and you hear the pieces whizzing through the air. Every man is holding in his hand and wielding a terrible power. Wrongly used, it is death to himself and his comrades. The other day a boy's hand was moist with perspiration and the bomb slipped, killing the group. Another prematurely exploded as it was being thrown, carrying away the man's own hand and killing the instructor. So it is a dangerous business. ”

“ Day and night, bombs thrown by the German air fleet exploded in all parts of the city, doing great damage to property and killing and wounding hundreds of innocent noncombatants. Day and night could be heard the roar of the artillery fire, and nightfall brought the additional terror of the fiery reflection from bursting shrapnel. The peasants from the villages to the west and south streamed into the city in vast numbers. Thousands of wounded coming from all directions added still more to the horror and excitement. ”

“ The real grief, the real terror of the populace, was not for the bombardment, but hunger, cold, and starvation. But one such account of the death-dealing shot gave me a deep shock. It came in the form of a black-bordered mourning-card sent to the house:—
Monsieur and Madame R—— inform you of the death of their two children, François aged eight, and Amélie aged four, who were struck by a bomb coming through the window. ”

“ It is a crime whose weapon of destruction wasn't the B-52 or F-16, nor were destructive 7-ton rockets fired, nor was there any dropping of the smart bombs whose smartness always leads to the murder of hundreds of women, children and elderly, for us to be told after every massacre that war cannot be freed of mistakes. No, the deadly weapon in this crime was an injection which should have contained medicine and healing, but instead introduced into the bodies of innocent children the lethal poison which would cause them constant pain and a slow death. ”

“ Terrorists and terror states do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations — and responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide. ”

“ On the earth, torn up by a recent explosion, were lying, here and there, broken beams, crushed bodies of Russians and French, heavy cast-iron cannon overturned into the ditch by a terrible force, half buried in the ground and forever dumb, bomb-shells, balls, splinters of beams, ditches, bomb-proofs, and more corpses, in blue or in gray overcoats, which seemed to have been shaken by supreme convulsions, and which were lighted up now every instant by the red fire of the explosions which resounded in the air. ”

“ So children join the LTTE voluntarily, suicide bombers go willingly to their deaths, the Peace Secretariat highlights suicidal assault teams in the pictures on its website and the Head of the Political Wing dons fatigues and leads military assaults. ”

“ He ends his life; and in some Russian, American, or Japanese table of statistics his death adds one more to the suicides in June. [20]
The close relation that exists between suicide and war was first brought to my attention by the sudden and remarkable decrease of suicide in the United States in 1898, the year of the war with Spain. Instead of increasing that year, as it had every previous year for more than a decade, the number of suicides decreased suddenly from 6,600 to 5,920, a falling off of 680 cases. ”

“ It seems to exert the whole of its force in waves like the ripples made when a large stone is thrown into a pond. The men go down like ninepins; buildings collapse like houses of playing cards; guns are turned over as if by some unseen hand.
"The explosion raises practically no dust or smoke. Even the earth disturbed by the case of the bomb striking the ground is instantly flattened out by the same extraordinary waves of force. Extreme cold is produced at the moment of the explosion. It is so intense that I felt it myself when I dropped my first bomb at a height of about 800 feet. ”