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How Expensive Is The War On Terror?
How Powerful Is Egypt?
Last month, an airplane flying from Egypt to Russia crashed in the Sinai Peninsula. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the crash. The Egyptian government has mostly been leading the case, but has started to consult U.S. authorities for assistance. The crash killed all 224 people on board and has sparked theories that the plane could have been deliberately attacked by terrorist organizations (e.g. ISIS).
Here, we take a look at the history of terrorist attacks perpetrated on passenger airplanes. The cataclysm of the attacks committed on September 11, 2001 was felt around the world. Nearly 3,000 people died after Saudi terrorists hijacked four planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in rural Pennsylvania. The 9/11 attacks set in motion the U.S. War on Terror as well as major domestic surveillance programs.
Farther back, in 1985, a passenger airliner exploded over the Atlantic Ocean while traveling from Montreal, Canada to New Delhi, India. The attack killed 329 people on board, most of whom were Canadian. The attack was carried out by Sikh terrorists, at a time when Sikhs in India were demanding independence to form the sovereign state of Khalistan.
In 1988, a bomb-carrying suitcase exploded on a plane while flying over Scotland. The death toll was 243 people and some theories suggest former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi may have been involved.
Still, statistics show acts of terror committed on planes is quite rare. From 1999 to 2009, only six planes were targeted by terrorists-four of them were the planes downed on September 11. In that time period, there were some 100 million passenger flights.
Learn More:
The Odds of Airborne Terror (fivethirtyeight.com)
"Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures."
U.S. Spy Agencies Believe Intelligence Indicates Terrorist Bomb Destroyed Plane (wsj.com)
"U.S. spy agencies now believe the preponderance of intelligence about last week's crash of a Russian passenger plane over Egypt points to a terrorist bombing as the cause, ..."
Colonel Gaddafi 'ordered Lockerbie bombing' (bbc.com)
"Libya's former justice minister has told a Swedish newspaper that Colonel Gaddafi personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing."