Soccer Dad

Booby trapped toys

First saw this at Secular Blasphemy. The Iraqi Insurgents are now targeting children by booby trapping toys:

The Iraqi army said on Thursday it had seized a number of booby-trapped children's dolls, accusing insurgents of using the explosive-filled toys to target children.

The dolls were found in a car, each one containing a grenade or other explosive, said an army statement.

This, unfortunately is not new. An article from 1996 tells of Bosnian (and Iranian) terrorists who had been caught with such deadly toys:

Some of the explosive devices found were built into small plastic toys for children, including a toy car, an ice cream cone and a helicopter. NATO officials said that they also found extensive instructional materials on explosives and conducting ambushes and sabotage. Students were apparently being trained to attack both military and civilian targets, conduct covert bombings, and lay booby-traps.

(CNN has a report here.

There was an incident in Spain a few years back where a booby-trapped truck killed a woman and injured her grandson:

Political violence in Spain's Basque Country reached what Clarín of Argentina described as "a new level of malice" Monday when a woman was killed and her 16-month-old grandson severely injured—he was blinded and lost an arm—by a booby-trapped toy car. ETA has not claimed responsibility for the bombing, but Basque police say that the bomb was left in a San Sebastián bar after a group of young separatists fled from an illegal demonstration over the weekend. Spain's El Mundo described the bar's owner finding the toy "splashing about among urine, toilet paper, and plastic cups" in the men's room. When no one had claimed it by Monday morning, he gave it to an ex-employee for her nephew. The toy exploded as the family rode home.

I had looked, but couldn't find contemporaneous accounts of the Soviet use of this tactic in Afghanistan. Still the Iraqi insurgents are now using a tactic that has been used for awhile now.