The Human Use of Human Beings: A Brief History of Suicide Bombing

In this screen shot of video footage taken by a local resident, a suicide bomber sent by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam detonates a bomb during a ceremony at a mosque in Akuressa, Sri Lanka, in 2009. Thirteen were killed.

Velupillai Prabhakaran was the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant group that came to be known as the "masters of suicide bombing." When he died, the organization fell apart.

A Japanese Tokkotai operative flies a suicide mission into the side of the U.S.S. Missouri in April 1945. 

Corporal Yukio Araki, 17, holds a puppy and poses with members of his squadron the day before his death in a suicide attack on a U.S. ship in May 1945.

The explosion of the Marine Corps building in Beirut, Lebanon on October 23, 1983 created a large cloud of smoke that was visible from miles away.

Ignaty Grinevitsky assassinated Russian Tsar Alexander II in a suicide attack with a dynamite bomb. He was a member of the People's Will.

This map of the route taken by the suicide bomber at the American Marine barracks on the morning of October 23, 1983, was included in a report on the incident by the Department of Defense.

Figures from“Worldwide Incidents Tracking System,” National Counterterrorism Center.

During an 1881 suicide attack on Russian Tsar Alexander II by members of the People's Will, two suicide bombers struck. The first attack, pictured here, resulted only in arrest, but the second, moments later, killed Allexander and bomber Ignaty Grinevitsky.

The aftermath of a suicide car bombing in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2007, the year suicide bombing peaked globally. Photo by Jim Gordon.

A member of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) stands next to a poster celebrating an Islamic Jihad operative who executed a suicide bombing in a shopping mall in 2003. The social support represented here is an essential quality of suicide bombing. Photo provided by the IDF.

This Navy photo shows the USS Cole after a suicide attack by an Al Qaeda operative in 2007.

Total numbers include bombs not detonated. Source: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

Diagram showing how suicide attackers used airplanes as missiles in an attack on New York City, and where debris from the crash fell. Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency

The south tower just after it was struck by the second plane.