A car bomb is an explosive device placed in a car or other vehicle and then detonated. It is commonly used as a weapon of assassination, terrorism, or guerrilla warfare, to kill the occupant(s) of the vehicle, people near the blast site, or to damage buildings or other property. Car bombs act as their own delivery mechanisms and can carry a relatively large amount of explosives without attracting suspicion.
The U.S. military and law enforcement agencies often call a car bomb a "VBIED", an acronym standing for "Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device", or "SVBIED" if it is used in a suicide attack.
Usage
Assassination
The earliest car bombs were intended for assassination. These were often wired to the car's ignition system, to explode when the car was started. Ignition triggering is now rare, as it is easy to detect and hard to install — interfering with the circuitry is time-consuming and car alarms can be triggered by drains on the car's electrical system. Also, the target may start the car remotely (inadvertently or otherwise), or the target may be a passenger a safe distance away when the car starts.
It is now more common for assassination bombs to be affixed to the underside of the car then detonated remotely, by the car's motion or by other means. The bomb is exploded as the target approaches or starts the vehicle or, more commonly, after the vehicle begins to move, when the target is more likely to be inside. For this reason, security guards often check the underside of vehicles with a mirror mounted on a long pole.
Attacks
A car bomb is an effective weapon because it is a easy way to transport a large ammount of explosives and flammable material to the site where the explosion should take place. A car bomb also produces a large amount of shrapnel, or flying debris, that causes secondary damage to bystanders and buildings.
Suicide bombing
In recent years, car bombs have become widely used by suicide bombers who seek to ram the car into a building and simultaneously detonate it.
Countermeasures
Defending against a car bomb involves keeping vehicles at a distance from vulnerable targets by using Jersey barriers, concrete blocks or bollards, or by hardening buildings to withstand an explosion. Since the height of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) campaign, the entrance to Downing Street has been closed, preventing the general public from getting near Number 10. Where major public roads pass near buildings, road closures may be the only option (thus, for instance, in Washington, D.C. the portion of Pennsylvania Avenue immediately in front of the White House) is closed to traffic). Historically these tactics have encouraged potential bombers to target "soft" or unprotected targets, such as markets.[1] The U.S. State Department has published a guide on car bomb awareness.[2]
History
A 2005 car bombing in Iraq, in which a second car bomb was detonated while Coalition forces were investigating the scene of an earlier such blast, resulting in 18 casualties.
BATF summary table illustrating the size and range of effectiveness of car bombs by vehicle type used
Vietcong terror car bombing aftermath scene in Saigon, 1965.
Car bomb in Iraq, made up of a number of artillery shells concealed in the back of a pickup truck.
The first car bomb may have been the one used for the assassination attempt on Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1905 in İstanbul by Armenian separatists, in the command of Belgian anarchist Edward Jorris.
In the past, groups that used car bombs have included:
- In 1920, when Italian anarchist Mario Buda parked his horse-drawn wagon filled with explosives and shrapnel near the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York City, directly across from J P Morgan Company. The explosion killed 40 and wounded 200.
- In 1927, Andrew Kehoe used a detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol which he had secretly planted inside a school. As rescuers started gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and detonated a bomb inside his shrapnel-filled vehicle, killing himself and the school superintendent, and killing and injuring several others. In total, Kehoe killed 45 people and injured 58 making the Bath School disaster the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history.
- In the late 1940s, the Zionist group Lehi used car and truck bombs against Palestinian and British targets as an attempt to end peace discussions;
- The Viet Cong guerrillas used them at the end of the First Indochina War and throughout the Vietnam War;
- The OAS used them at the end of the French rule in Algeria;
- The Sicilian Mafia used them to assassinate independent magistrates in the early 1960s;
- The IRA used them frequently during its campaign during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and England. The Omagh bombing by the Real IRA, an IRA splinter group caused the most casualties in the Troubles from a single car bomb.
- Loyalist paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association used car bombs against civilians in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The UVF bombs in Dublin and Monaghan.[3][4] caused the most casualties in a single day during the Troubles.
- During the Soviet-Afghan war, at a variety of training camps in the tribal areas of Pakistan;[5], the Pakistani ISI with the aid of the CIA trained mujahadin in the preparation of car bombs
- Agents of the Chilean intelligence agency DINA were convicted of using car booms to assassinate Orlando Letelier and Carlos Prats, who were opponents of the regime of Augusto Pinochet
- In the 1980s, the Latin American drug lord Pablo Escobar used vehicle bombs extensively against government forces and population centers in Latin America;
- In 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a Ryder box truck filled with an explosive mixture (fuel oil and fertilizer) in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see Oklahoma City bombing)
- In the late 1990s and early 2000s, vehicular explosives were used by Chechen extremists against targets in Russia
Mass-casualty car bombing, and especially suicide car bombing, is currently a predominantly Middle Eastern phenomenon. The tactic was first introduced to the region by the Stern gang, who used it extensively against Palestinian and British targets; it was subsequently taken up by Palestinian bombers as well.[6]The tactic was widely used in the Lebanese Civil War by the Islamic fundamentalist group Hezbollah. The most notable car bombing was the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, which killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French military personnel. In the Lebanese civil war, an estimated 3,641 car bombs were detonated.[7]
Groups that still use car bombs include:
See also
Notes
References
- Mike Davis, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (Verso: New York, 2007).
External links
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