The increase of female suicide bombers in Iraq since 2007 is alarming and quite unnerving. Just yesterday, suicide bombers struck two cities, killing 57 and wounding close to 300 people. The Associated Press reports:
Female suicide bombers struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300, police said.
Such attacks are increasingly carried out by women, who are more easily able to hide explosives under their all-encompassing black Islamic robes, or abayas, and often are not searched at checkpoints.
In a bid to improve the ability to search women, the U.S. military has stepped up recruitment and training efforts for women in the police force and as members of U.S.-allied Sunni groups that have joined forces against al-Qaida in Iraq.
Iraqi security forces deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims near the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah, where the Shiite saint Imam Moussa al-Kadhim is buried in a golden domed shrine.
Whether these women are willingly murdering innocent people or are themselves victims of terrorism is yet to be known. Despite other precautions, there must be an increase in the training of other Iraqi women to take part in the prevention of potential female suicide bombers.
2 Comments
swifty656 | July 31, 2008, 10:58am | #
So, what do these ladies do if they detect a bomber; get blown up?
Harry G. Cretin | July 31, 2008, 11:44am | #
I would lay considerable odds that the Females that feel they must end their lives so drastically are feeling the Heat of Depression or Social Alienation or very Despondent realizing there is no way out for them to be useful not only to themselves but to their community and the Country of Iraq. I can only imagine what must be going through their thought process just prior to the detonation.