Instant Retribution in the Middle East

Sometimes the forces of evil get punished quickly, cleanly, and without outside agency. Schadenfreude permitted. This blog keeps track of some items in the news:

"Arab attacker killed by his own rock": An unnamed Palestinian teenager hurled heavy stones at Israeli-owned vehicles along a highway in the West Bank on the evening of January 13, managing to hit one car, driven by a resident of a nearby town, Emmanuel. Israeli paramedics then received a report of an unconscious Arab teen badly wounded by the highway and found he had suffered a serious head injury; their efforts could not save his life and he died soon after. A forensic report showed that the cause of his injury was the stone thrown at the Emmanuel man's car, which hit the tire and bounced back at high speed, hitting the teenager in the head, fatally injuring him.

"Al Qaeda bungles arms experiment": U.S. intelligence found that Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) closed a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, perhaps killing forty or more operatives. It appears the cause of the problem was that a sealed area with biological or chemical substances had been breached. London's Sun reported bubonic plague as the cause but a senior U.S. intelligence officer dismissed that possibility without offering an alternative hypothesis. (January 20, 2009)

مصور صحفي تشتعل فيه النار ويصاب بجروح متوسطة خلال تغطيته لمسيرته في غزة: A report in Filastin al-Yawm tells of a Palestinian cameraman, Abd ar-Rahman al-Khatib, covering a public burning in Gaza of the U.S. and Israeli flags, himself got burned on his face, hands, and feet. (January 30, 2009)

Palestinian cameraman Abd ar-Rahman al-Khatib got burned along witih the U.S. and Israeli flags.

"Terror suspect killed as bomb he was making accidentally explodes": "A suspected member of al-Qaeda was killed Sunday," reports Deutsche Presse Agentur, "when an explosive device he was making went off accidentally in southern Yemen, the defence ministry said. The suspect, identified as Anwar Muhammed al-Taghshi, died instantly as the bomb exploded in his hideout in the al-Wadhea district of the southern province of Abyan, the ministry said in a statement. It said al-Taghshi was on the list of most wanted al-Qaeda members sought by police in Yemen. The suspect 'was preparing the bomb to use it in a terrorist operation when it exploded and killed him instantly'." (May 3, 2009)

"[Crashed] Iran plane was carrying arms for Hezbollah": According to Corriere della Sera, an Iranian Tupolev plane that crashed two weeks ago on its way to Armenia, killing 168, resulted from an explosion of fuses being delivered to Hezbollah. (August 2, 2009)

"Explosion at Islamic school in Indonesia kills 1": Outside the Middle East, yes, but an Islamist tale from Sumbawa Island in central Indonesia, where an instructor showing students how to construct a bomb was apparently killed by a homemade bomb inside an Islamic boarding school. The police found the body of the suspected bomb maker, a 30-year-old man named Firdaus, on a bus it left the school compound. The police also confiscated arrows and machetes; they have taken eleven people for questioning. (July 12, 2011)

"Terrorists Fire in 'Wrong' Direction, Injure Egyptian Woman": A rocket from the Hamas ruled Gaza landed not in southern Israel, as intended, but in a residential neighborhood of Rafah, a city that straddles the border with Egypt. A woman suffered shrapnel wounds and was taken to the local hospital. (August 24, 2011)

"Gaza Terrorist Killed by Own Bomb": Ahmad al-Azameh, 22, a Gaza-based terrorist, was killed by his own bomb while trying to plant the device along the Israel-Gaza security fence separating Israel's southern communities from northern Gaza. (October 10, 2011)

"Rocket Fired From Lebanon at Israel Falls Short, Lebanese Woman Wounded": A rocket sent from Majdal Silim, Lebanon, against Israel, presumably fired by Hizbullah, fell short, hit a home in Houla, Lebanon, a border village, seriously wounding a Lebanese woman and damaging her home. (December 12, 2011)

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