Eurasia Review
18 January 2016
- RSIS
- Media Mentions
- Mass Casualty Urban Terrorist Assaults – Analysis
Mass Casualty Urban Terrorist Assaults – Analysis
Attacks on major cities or capitals are becoming more frequent and range from the use of primitive tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to the increasingly more sophisticated TTPs, which involve multiple personnel attacking either one or several targets simultaneously such as the rolling attack in Jakarta on 14 January 2016. Why are cities targets and how are terrorists targetting cities?
In 2015, capitals around the world suffered devastating assaults by terrorists. Paris was subject to two devastating terrorist events, Beirut was hit by terrorists linked to Islamic State in an attack that was largely ignored, while further to the east, Iraqi cities have been subjected to a wide range of terrorist assaults, the like of which have not been suffered by cities in the rest of the world.
In recent years many cities have been the targets of terrorist attacks; these attacks range from relatively simple but still quite deadly assaults to the more complex assaults that we have recently witnessed in Paris. It is likely that we will continue to witness assaults by committed and fanatical terrorist groups on major urban centres; the attack of January 14 on Jakarta is a harbinger of more to come.
… Ahmed Salah Hashim is an Associate Professor in Strategic Studies with the Military Studies Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
IDSS / GPO / Online
