Word: bomber
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...chilling scenes, television footage captured the moment that the bomber struck. A tightly packed crowd, dressed in black and holding banners aloft, solemnly shuffled down one of Karachi's main roads. Some performed the matam, beating their chests as they mourned the death of Imam Hussain, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who was killed in 680 A.D. in the Iraqi city of Karbala. On all four sides, well-armed policemen and paramilitary guards surrounded the marchers. But even beefed-up security measures were unable to thwart the bomber, who blew himself up near the back of the crowd. After...
...small way, the system did work, because screening effectively forced the alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to use a liquid chemical rather than a more basic or reliable detonator to trigger the powdered explosive that was sewn into his underwear and smuggled on board. And it turns out that pulling off such an explosion on a plane is no simple feat. "It's a bit more complicated than just putting a flame to the powder," says Jimmie Carol Oxley, the director of the Center of Excellence in Explosives Detection, Mitigation, Response and Characterization at the University of Rhode Island...
...small as a hundredth of a pound. It comes from the same chemical family as nitroglycerin and has a long history of use in terrorist attacks. Though PETN itself is controlled, the chemicals used to make it aren't that hard to find - and Abdulmutallab or any other bombers would likely be able to obtain the explosive on the black market if they couldn't synthesize it themselves. The shoe bomber Richard Reid tried to use PETN to destroy a plane over the Atlantic in 2001, and the Saudi Arabian government has reported that the chemical was used...
Having to use a liquid primer rather than a detonator makes the bomber's task more difficult but not impossible. It will not be easy to prevent similar attacks in the future without ramped-up airport security. While airport "puffer" machines, which blow air on passengers to collect residue, might have detected the PETN, it's not certain, and many airports lack the machines. "There's always room for improvement in airport security, but it's always going to be a trade-off between convenience and commerce," says Oxley. In the meantime, we may have to count on what worked...
...incendiary mixture as the plane was in its descent to Detroit. This suggests that he was not merely trying to kill the passengers and crew but was probably hoping to make the plane crash in a populated area. The technique also has parallels with "shoe bomber" Richard Reid's failed attempt to bring down American Airlines Flight 63 just three days before Christmas 2001. The FBI affidavit charging Abdulmutallab also indicated that the Nigerian used PETN, the same explosive substance Reid tried to detonate...