Suicide Bombs Potent Tools of Terrorists

Al Qaeda has also favored suicide plots on more than 20 occasions since 1996 against the United States and its allies, including the unprecedented Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people.

But for sheer volume, Iraq is now the global center of suicide terrorism. In the days before yesterday's bombing, 27 people, mostly children, died in a suicide attack staged as soldiers handed out treats, and at least 25 others were killed when 10 suicide bombers targeted vehicles in coordinated attacks in Baghdad.

Though sporadic ambushes and roadside bombings began to plague U.S.-led occupation troops almost immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in April 2003, the beginning of a full-fledged insurgency is generally traced to the suicide car bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Aug. 7 of that year. The attack, which killed 14, was followed two weeks later by a suicide truck-bomb attack that destroyed the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and killed at least 20 people.

Delivered primarily in vehicles but also by individuals wearing rigged belts or vests, suicide bombs have killed and injured thousands. Vehicular suicide bombs, in particular, are "very lethal precision weapons that . . . have significant effect wherever they're employed," said the U.S. military's chief spokesman in Iraq, Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald Alston.

"If we look at what it takes to drive a bomb-laden vehicle into a crowd of people, it is not that challenging to perform that function -- especially if you're willing to give your life," Alston said.

Who the suicide bombers are, and what motivates them, remains much less clear in Iraq than in Israel and the occupied territories, where the attackers' identities are quickly and widely disseminated by Palestinian factions and Israeli authorities.

Neither side in the Iraqi conflict has been willing or able to release detailed information on suicide bombers. U.S. and Iraqi authorities say they are certain that the vast majority of suicide bombers come from outside Iraq. But gathering forensic evidence is often impossible because of the continuing danger at bombing sites.

Pape says that attacks in Iraq and elsewhere show that "the connection between Islamic fundamentalism and suicide bombing is misleading."

"The logic driving these attacks is mainly a strategic goal: to compel the U.S. and other countries to remove their forces from the Arabian peninsula," Pape said. "The London attacks are simply the next step in al Qaeda executing its strategic logic."

Others disagree, arguing that even if terrorist leaders have strategic reasons for choosing suicide attacks, the bombers and their families are often motivated by religious belief. Hoffman calculates that 31 of 35 groups that have used suicide bombings are Islamic.

"To try to reduce it to an agenda that is purely political is to misunderstand religion," Benjamin said. "The reason that bin Laden and his followers want the U.S. out of the Middle East has religious roots."

The Cult of Glorification

The boys all know the way to Ahmed Abu Khalil's house, tucked along an alley in a neighborhood of the West Bank town of Atil known as Two Martyrs. Abu Khalil, 18, became its third after he blew himself up Tuesday near a shopping mall in the Israeli city of Netanya.