A massive truck bomb devastated the heavily guarded Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital Saturday, killing at least 40 people and wounding at least 100. Officials feared there were dozens more dead inside the burning building.
The Marriott has been a favorite place for foreigners as well as Pakistani politicians and business people to stay and socialize in Islamabad despite repeated militant attacks.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. But Pakistan has faced a wave of militant violence in recent weeks following army-led offensives against insurgents in its border regions.
The capital has not been spared, though Saturday’s blast appeared to be one of the largest ever terrorist attacks in the country.
The blast left a vast crater, some 30 feet deep in front of the main building, where flames poured from the windows and rescuers ferried bloodied bodies from the gutted building.
As usual this bombing was called a suicide bombing. Pardon the sarcasm please but if one person with a bomb dies then that is suicide bomb. If the bomb takes out 1 or more persons then in my opinion it is a HOMOCIDE bombing caused by a suicide bomber. Here in Western MI the FOX news channel calls it correctly – Homicide bombing.
#1 Agree with your sentiment, but the semantics follow the convention of describing the agent of the attack, e.g.: missile attack, artillery attack, infantry attack, etc.
I was thinking about this lately when reading a translation of a Chinese paper describing how to conduct a guided missile attack against US navy task forces. The author was concerned with how to project destructive power within the target’s defensive perimeter. He noted that missiles had that “insertion” capability.
In the suicide bombing case, the “insertion” is made feasible by using a disposible delivery system, much as a missile is regarded. In this case, use of a “suicide”. Note, I’m not arguing about the morality of the whole issue.
Fox’s use of “homicide bombing” has always annoyed me. Any time a bomb kills people, it’s a homicide. “Suicide bombing” tells me that the means of destruction were delivered by a suicide mission rather than remote control, missile strike, etc.
How ironic for a supposed devout Muslim to kill himself and murder dozens of Ramadan celebrants at the same time. This extreme Islamism is a satanic murder cult.