May 22, 2013
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Description
A suicide attack is an attack upon a target, in which an attacker intends to kill others and/or cause great damage, knowing that he or she will either certainly or most likely die in the process. Between 1981 and 2006, 1200 suicide attacks occurred around the world, constituting 4% of all terrorist attacks but 32% of all terrorism related deaths. 90% of these attacks occurred in Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Sri Lanka.
Although use of suicide attacks has occurred throughout recent history — particularly with the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II — its main notoriety as a specific kind of attack began in the 1980s and involved explosives deliberately carried to the target either on the person or in a civilian vehicle and delivered by surprise. Following the success of a 1983 truck bombing of two barracks buildings in Beirut that killed 300 and helped drive American and French Multinational Force troops from Lebanon, the tactic spread to insurgent groups like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, and Islamist groups such as Hamas.
More recently, the number of suicide attacks has grown significantly, from an average of less than five a year in the 1980s to 180/year in the first half of the 00s, and from 81 suicide attacks in 2001 to 460 in 2005. Particularly hard-hit by attacks have been military and civilian targets in Sri Lanka, Israeli targets in Israel since April 1993, Iraqis since the US-led invasion of that country in 2003, and Pakistanis and Afghans since 2005.
(via Freebase)
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