- Exploding donkey
There have been several documented incidents of
donkey s andmule s being used to deliver bombs.Lebanon
After the 1982 invasion of
Lebanon byIsrael ,Shiite militants turned to suicide attacks to drive out the Israeli army. On one occasion, a mule was used as a bomb carrier instead. Other times, bombers were intercepted with explosives hidden on themselves while they were riding donkeys.West Bank
One donkey was exploded near a checkpoint in the
West Bank town ofBethlehem onJanuary 26 ,2003 . No humans died in the attack, and it was uncertain as to whether the attack was meant specifically to killIsrael i soldiers; the attack coincided with Israeli advances into theGaza Strip .The attack did provoke a response from PETA president
Ingrid Newkirk , who, after receiving many complaints, wrote a letter to Palestinian PresidentYasser Arafat asking him to encourage others to "leave the animals out of this conflict". In the letter, she cited historical examples of US, UK, andAl Qaeda -sponsored abuses of other animals in conflicts, specifically notingdog s were simply left inVietnam by the US during theVietnam War , despite the fact that they were "loyal." She thus came to the conclusion that:Iraq
In
2004 , during theIraq War , a donkey inRamadi ,Iraq was loaded with explosives and set off towards a US-run checkpoint. It exploded before it was able to injure or kill anyone but itself. The incident, along with a number of similar incidents involving dogs, fueled fears of terrorist practices of using living animals as weapons, a change from an older practice of using the bodies of dead animals to hold explosives. To one official, this was a simple variation of using "mentally retarded people for operations during the elections." A colonel added that "using people and animals" was a terrorist tactic that seemed to be replacingcar bombs .Fact|date=May 2007ee also
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Exploding animal
*Exploding sheep References
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CBS news: [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/27/world/main538044.shtml Israel Moves Deep Into Gaza] January 26, 2003.
* PETA [http://www.peta.org/feat/arafat/ Leave the Animals in Peace: PETA's letter to Yasser Arafat] February 3, 2003.
*The Standard (originally fromThe Los Angeles Times ): [http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Focus/GH12Dh02.html Dogs of war can be friend or foe] August 12, 2005.
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