Female Suicide Bombers: Tamil Tiger Teenage Girl Led the Way

The sudden emergence of female suicide bombers in Iraq in 2007 shocked a country already inured to violence. From late 2007 to late 2008 there were 33 female suicide bombings. In the four preceding years there had been only two or three. But Iraq was not the first conflict to generate women desperate enough to sacrifice themselves.

Sri Lanka

Of the 200 or so suicide bombings carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in their civil war with the Sri Lankan government at least 60 are thought to have involved female attackers. The first, on 21 May 1991, remains among the most politically devastating suicide missions ever launched. The target – former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi – was killed by a 17-year-old girl known as Dhanu.

Black Tigers, as the Tamil suicide bombers liked to be known, introduced suicide belts to make their task easier and female volunteers were said to have been enthusiastic to wear them, with dozens putting their names forward for each mission. In February this year 26 people were killed by a female Black Tiger at a checkpoint in the north of the country as the LTTE made its desperate last stand against government forces.

Palestine

The Palestinians, too, have had female suicide bombers. The first came in January 2002, at the height of the second intifada. Wafa Idris was a divorced paramedic who had been wounded at work by rubber-coated bullets fired by Israeli troops. She detonated a bomb she was carrying in Jerusalem and killed an elderly Israeli man. A month later Dareen Abu Aysheh, 21, a student, blew herself up at a roadblock in Ramallah, injuring Israeli policemen. The following month Ayat al-Akhras, 18, from the Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem, killed two people when she blew herself up in Jerusalem.

The number of suicide bombings has since decreased significantly, but occasionally women are still involved. Three years ago a 70-year old great-grandmother and Hamas loyalist, Fatma al-Najar, blew herself up in Gaza near a group of Israeli soldiers during a major military incursion of the strip.

Russia

The Kremlin's second war in Chechnya created a new breed of female suicide bombers known as black widows – who carried out a string of attacks in Russia from 2000-04. Of the 50 terrorists who took part in the theatre siege in Moscow in October 2002, 18 were women. Other bombers targeted the capital's cafes and hotels, as well as trains and planes.

Stephen Khan, Rory McCarthy