Shahzad Tanweer - Britain's first 'suicide bomber'

Shahzad Tanweer, 22, ‘a good kid from a good family’ who ‘liked to play sports’. These were the comments from a friend of one of the ‘suicide bombers’ who targeted London’s transport network. Tanweer lived with his parents in a district of Leeds in a so called multi-cultural area. If it is proved that Tanweer was the bomber, it is certainly clear that he hid well his true intensions and views. The community from which Tanweer, and others linked to the bombing have come from, have been shocked. And the link to Islam seems to be fuelling ‘islamiphobia’ as attacks increase, besides being downplayed by police, and to a certain degree the media. The emotive use of ‘Suicide Bombers’ on many of Wednesday’s front pages will no doubt increase tensions. The Mirror went with ‘Suicide Murderers’ which echoes the rhetoric of FOX News’ much lambasted ‘Homicide Bombers’. That phrase was born out of the bombs targeted so many times in the last year in Iraq against US troops and in Israel too. And today too a suicide bomber detonated himself killing two and injuring over thirty in an attack in the early evening in Israel. Ha’aretz, one of Israel’s leading newspapers, described the incident, “An Islamic Jihad suicide bomber killed three women and injured 90, five seriously, near the Sharon shopping mall in Netanya yesterday. The bomber, identified as 18-year-old Ahmed Abu Khalil from the West Bank village of Atil, blew himself up on a pedestrian crossing near the entrance to the mall.”
Israel was not the only country to see terrorism today. In Iraq suicide bombers killed up to 24 according to CNN . In Spain a new power station was targeteted by ETA near the Basque city of Amorebieta. No-one was injured, according to reports so far, in that attack. This was probably due to the short warning given prior to the blasts. And warnings are something which kept the death toll down throughout the IRA campaign, though so called ‘mistakes’ occurred. The UK now faces an unseen, invisible enemy which gives no warning. The type of attack on London is not new besides Tony Blair’s claim that “we face a new kind of terrorism”, but it is new to Londoners. Israel has seen it for several years, and Iraq has seen it almost daily for the last two. It can be easy to fall into the rhetoric of sensationalist headlines, but the details with regards these attacks are not yet clear as to how big the threat in the UK may be. The public will however be influenced by the rhetoric and opinions found in many of the newspapers in England as recriminations fly.
[23:30 GMT 12/07/2005]