The recent car-and-knife attack in London was just the latest in a string of high-profile incidents where assailants have used vehicles as deadly weapons. This type of attack has over the past few years become a feature of violent terrorism in the West and elsewhere – so where did it come from, and how did it become such a common method?
The most famous forbears of the vehicle-ramming attack were the 1981 bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut and the 1983 attacks on the US marine barracks and embassy in Beirut – widely held to be the first examples of modern suicide bombing. In the 1983 attacks, explosive-laden vehicles were not only used to deliver improvised explosive devices (IEDs) but also to breach the perimeters around their targets.
In the years since, attackers have used vehicles to breach security perimeters to detonate IEDs both on land (the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack) and at sea (the 2000 USS Cole bombing). But the use of vehicle-ramming as a terroristic technique in itself, rather than as a means of delivering explosives, is a relatively recent innovation.
Its roots can be traced to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and especially the summer of 2008, when vehicles were three times used to deliberately strike pedestrians. The first two attacks involved bulldozers, while the third used a car. By 2016, vehicle-ramming attacks in Israel had become the second deadliest form of attack carried out by Palestinians against Israelis, behind only stabbing.
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