07/06/2014
Barrel bombs risk becoming answer to insurgency
WASHINGTON ? In desperate efforts to gain ground on battlefields, frustrated governments in the Mideast and Africa are using barrel bombs against their enemies ? launching the cheap, quickly manufactured weapons as a crude counter to roadside blasts and suicide explosions that insurgents have deployed with deadly success for years. New evidence that they are being used in Iraq after being dropped on civilian populations in Syria and Sudan has raised concerns that governments in a number of unstable nations will embrace them. Described as quot;flying IEDsquot; ? or improvised explosive devices ? barrel bombs have the power to wipe out a row of buildings in a single blast and can kill large...
