The Humble Car Bomb Changed The World

Baghdad Car Bomb Aftermath

From Times Online:

It was a sunny afternoon on Beirut’s glamorous seafront in April 1983 and the world was about to change for ever. Old men stood fishing on the rocks opposite the American embassy. Women in high heels and sunglasses strolled along the boardwalk undeterred by the civil war and the honking traffic. Just before 1pm a green Mercedes carefully drove past the embassy, scouting the entrance, and 300 yards later flashed its lights at a waiting GMC flat-bed truck. The young man driving the Texas-built truck then slowly drove up to the embassy, accelerated the wrong way through the exit ramp, hit the entrance steps, bounced up into the lobby and exploded his bomb.

It was a stunning assault using the deadliest weapon so far of the 21st century: the car bomb. It was also the first suicide car-bomb attack on a western target.

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The Wikipedia entry for Car Bomb is here.