http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOqnITZgb53UdYDNbVz6RHQ?feature=mhee
Historical
To counter the superior numbers of the
Chola empire's army in the
11th century AD, suicide squads were raised by the
Indian Chera rulers. This helped the
Cheras to resist
Chola invasion and maintain the independence of their kingdom from the time of
Kulothunga Chola I. These warriors were known as the "chavers".[1]
Later, these suicide squads rendered service as police, volunteer troop and fighting squads in the region. Now their primary duty was to assist local rulers in battles and skirmishes. The rulers of the state of Valluvanad is known to have deployed a number of suicide squads against the ruler of
Calicut.
In the late
17th century Qing official
Yu Yonghe recorded that injured
Dutch soldiers fighting against
Koxinga's forces for control of
Taiwan in 1661 would use gunpowder to blow up both themselves and their opponents rather than be taken prisoner.[2] However, the
Chinese observer may have confused such suicidal tactics with the standard
Dutch military practice of undermining and blowing up positions recently overrun by the enemy which almost cost Koxinga his life during the siege.[3]
During the
Belgian Revolution, on
February 5, 1831, Dutch
Lieutenant Jan van Speijk detonated his own ship in the harbour of
Antwerp to prevent its capture by the
Belgians.
Another example was the Prussian soldier
Karl Klinke on 18 April
1864 at the
Battle of Dybbøl, who died blowing a
hole in a
Danish fortification.
In the
18th century John Paul Jones wrote about Ottoman sailors setting their own ships on fire and ramming the ships of their enemies, refusing to leave their vessels, although they knew this meant certain death for them.
Modern suicide bombing as a political tool can be traced back to the assassination of
Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881.
Alexander fell victim to a
Nihilist plot. While driving on one of the central streets of
Saint Petersburg, near the
Winter Palace, he was mortally wounded by the explosion of hand-made grenades and died a few hours afterwards. The
Tsar was killed by a member of
Narodnaya Volya,
Ignacy Hryniewiecki, who died while intentionally exploding the bomb during the attack.
Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff intended to assassinate
Adolf Hitler by suicide bomb in 1943, but was unable to complete the attack.[4]
During the
Battle for Berlin the
Luftwaffe flew
Selbstopfereinsatz against
Soviet bridges over the
Oder River. These missions were flown by pilots of the
Leonidas Squadron under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel Heiner
Lange. From 17 April until 20
April 1945, using any aircraft that were available, the Luftwaffe claimed that the squadron destroyed 17 bridges, however
the military historian Antony Beevor when writing about the incident thinks that this was exaggerated and that only the railway bridge at Küstrin was definitely destroyed. He comments that "thirty-five pilots and aircraft was a high price to pay for such a limited and temporary success". The missions were called off when the Soviet ground forces reached the vicinity of the squadron's airbase at Jüterbog.[5]
Following World War II,
Viet Minh "death volunteers" fought against the
French Colonial Forces by using a long stick-like explosive to destroy
French tanks.
An
Arab Christian military officer from
Syria,
Jules Jammal, used a suicide bomb attack to bring down a
French ship during the
Suez Crisis in
1956.[6][dubious -- discuss]
The
Irish Republican Army used proxy suicide bombers in a series of attacks in
1990s.[7][8]
[edit] Modern
Hezbollah's attacks in
Lebanon in
1963 are the first examples of the modern suicide terrorism.[9]
Workers Party of Kurdistan (
PKK) used the first suicide attack in
1996, and al
Queda in the mid-1990s.[9] The number of attacks using suicide tactics has grown from an average of fewer than five per year during the
1980s to
180 per year between
2000 and
2005,[10] and from 81 suicide attacks in
2001 to 460 in 2005.[11] These attacks have been aimed at diverse military and civilian targets, including in
Sri Lanka, in
Israel since July 6,
1989,[12] in
Iraq since the
US-led invasion of that country in
2003, in Pakistan since 2001 and in
Afghanistan since 2005 and in
Somalia since
2006.[13][14]
Between
1980 and 2000 the largest number of suicide attacks was carried out by separatist
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (
LTTE) of Sri Lanka. The first suicide attack by LTTE was in
1987.[9] The number of attacks conducted by LTTE was almost double that of nine other major extremist organizations.[15]
- published: 28 Sep 2012
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