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Anexplosive belt (also calledsuicide belt,suicide vest orbomb vest) is animprovised explosive device, a belt or a vest packed withexplosives and armed with adetonator, worn bysuicide bombers. Explosive belts are usually packed withball bearings,nails,screws, bolts, and other objects that serve asshrapnel to maximize the number of casualties in the explosion.
The Chinese used explosive vests during theSecond Sino-Japanese War.[1][2] A Chinese soldier detonated a grenade vest and killed 20 Japanese atSihang Warehouse. Chinese troops strapped explosives like grenade packs or dynamite to their bodies and threw themselves over Japanese tanks to blow them up.[3] This tactic was used during theBattle of Shanghai, where a Chinese suicide bomber stopped a Japanese tank column by exploding himself beneath the lead tank,[4] and at theBattle of Taierzhuang, where Chinese troops rushed at Japanese tanks and blew themselves up with dynamite and grenades.[5][6][7][8][9] During one incident at Taierzhuang, Chinese suicide bombers destroyed four Japanese tanks with grenade bundles.[10][11]
The use ofsuicidal attacks to inflict damage upon an enemy predates theSecond World War, in whichKamikaze units (suicidal air attacks) andKaiten ("living torpedoes") were used to attackAllied forces. Japanese soldiers routinely detonated themselves by attacking Allied tanks while carrying antitank mines, magnetic demolition charges, hand grenades and other explosive devices.[citation needed]
The explosive belt usually consists of several cylinders filled with explosive (de factopipe bombs), or in more sophisticated versions with plates of explosive. The explosive is surrounded by afragmentation jacket that produces the shrapnel responsible for most of the bomb's lethality, effectively making the jacket a crude, body-worn,Claymore mine. Once the vest is detonated, the explosion resembles an omnidirectionalshotgun blast. The most dangerous and the most widely used shrapnel are steel balls 3–7 mm (1⁄8–9⁄32 in) in diameter.[12] Other shrapnel material can be anything of suitable size and hardness, most often nails, screws, nuts, and thick wire. Shrapnel is responsible for about 90% of all casualties caused by this kind of device.
A "loaded" vest may weigh between 5 and 20 kilograms (10 and 45 lb) and may be hidden under thick clothes, usually jackets or snow coats.
A suicidevest may cover the entire stomach and usually has shoulder straps.
A commonsecurity procedure against suspected suicide bombers is to move the suspect at least 15 metres (50 ft) away from other people, then ask them to remove their upper clothing. While this procedure is relatively uncontroversial for use on males, it may cause an issue when dealing with females suspected of beingsuicide bombers. Male security personnel may be reluctant to inspect or strip-search females, and can be accused of sexual harassment after having done so.[13] Alternatively, aninfrared detector can be used. There are assertions that using amillimeter wave scanner would be viable for the task, but the concept has been disputed.
The discovery of remains as well as incidentally unexploded belts or vests can offerforensic clues to the investigation after the attack.[14]
Suicide bombers who wear the vests are often obliterated by the explosion; the best evidence of their identity is the head, which often remains relatively intact because it is separated and thrown clear off the body by the explosion. JournalistJoby Warrick conjectured: "The vest's tight constraints and the positioning of the explosive pouches would channel the energy of the blast outward, toward whoever stood directly in front of him. Some of that energy wave would inevitably roll upward, ripping the bomber's body apart at its weakest point, between the neck bones and lower jaw. It accounts for the curious phenomenon in which suicide bombers' heads are severed clean at the moment of detonation and are later found in a state of perfect preservation several metres away from the torso's shredded remains."[15]
