Inclusion Daily Express -- Officials: Terrorists Used Women With Disabilities To Kill Dozens At Baghdad Pet Markets

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Officials: Terrorists Used Women With Disabilities To Kill Dozens At Baghdad Pet Markets
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
February 1, 2008

BAGHDAD, IRAQ--Two women with intellectual disabilities walked into separate Baghdad pet markets Friday morning, when bombs they wore exploded.

While early news accounts reported that the two women were "mentally retarded" or "mentally disabled", some later reports specifically described them as having Down syndrome.

The blasts killed at least 70 people -- the most in the capital city in nearly a year -- and wounded more than 100 others.

Iraqi and American officials said the women appeared to have been sent to the animal markets by the terrorist group al-Qaeda in Iraq. They speculated that the women were probably chosen because they would not question those who sent them to their deaths, and because security personnel would not suspect them of carrying explosives.

The officials could not confirm whether the women detonated the explosive themselves, or the bombs were blown up by remote control.

These are not the first reports of people with disabilities being used as weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last April, a United Nations news service reported of dozens of instances where al-Qaeda in Iraq militants had kidnapped and recruited children with disabilities to carry out suicide bombings. In some cases, the children were reportedly told that sacrificing themselves would benefit their people and guarantee them a place in paradise. In other cases, the children's families reportedly sold them to the insurgents to fight the Iraqi government and occupation forces.

On Election Day in January 2005, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that a 19-year-old man with Down syndrome had been killed when insurgents apparently detonated explosives that they had strapped to his chest before they ordered him to walk toward a Baghdad polling place. The paper noted that there had been unconfirmed reports of insurgents attempting to use other people with Down syndrome in their attacks, but that they had been caught and stopped in time.

Some officials in Afghanistan believe that a majority of suicide bombers recruited by the Taliban there had physical or mental disabilities.

Related:
"Disabilities And The 'War On Terror'" (Inclusion Daily Express Archives)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/war.htm

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