Global death toll from homemade bombs spikes 70 percent since 2011

More than 60,000 civilians across 66 countries have been killed or injured over the past three years in blasts caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), representing a 70 percent rise in deaths due to crude but often effective methods of destruction, according to a review of media reports released Wednesday.

The review, conducted by the London-based anti-violence advocacy group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), comes as IEDs used against civilians continue to rip through towns in Iraq, with bloodshed between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds endangering the Baghdad government’s grip on the country. But the simple arrangements of explosives assembled by amateur but sometimes-skilled engineers are deployed across many strife-torn nations.

AOAV urged countries to start condemning IEDs as they once did land mines and chemical weapons, taking active measures to secure supplies of explosives and offer medical and psychological care for the wounded.

AOAV also said the true number of dead in IED attacks is likely to be far higher.

“AOAV’s data on IEDs is drawn from almost 500 different English-language media sources. It captures only a snapshot of worldwide explosive violence as reported in the news media,” the group said.

“As such it presents only a low estimate of the real extent of suffering caused by explosive violence.”

All the same, the figures behind the increase in deaths are sobering. In 2011, 13,340 civilians were killed or injured in IED blasts. In 2013, the death toll increased by almost 10,000 to reach 22,735.

The destruction didn’t hit just Iraq and Afghanistan, closely associated with the Western public’s idea of the IED, in part because of its widespread use against U.S. and allied forces during the wars there. 

Indeed, armed groups have increasingly used IEDs in Syria, Pakistan, Nigeria and Thailand, evidence of their popularity as a means of killing or striking fear in one’s enemies, armed and unarmed alike.

“This huge increase in the number of innocent victims harmed and killed by IEDs is a terrible concern. Not only to those whose lives are transformed in an instant by these pernicious weapons, but to governments who have to bear the costs of the medical and security implications of these attacks,” Ian Overton, AOAV’s director of investigations, said in a news release accompanying Wednesday’s study.

He added, “The use of suicide and car bombing as a major weapon is spreading, and fast. Countries that had not seen their use five years ago are experiencing their horrors now.”

The targeting of civilians also appears to have increased. In 2011, 51 percent of blasts happened in public areas like markets or cafés. In 2013, 62 percent of IED detonations took place in civilian-heavy areas.

Indeed, the report found that public areas were by far the most popular places to set off the bombs, disguised as innocuous objects, packed inside motor vehicles or strapped to people who commit suicide attacks.

Car bombs have become a more popular means of delivering death by IED, rising to 33 percent of strikes in 2013 from 11 percent in 2011. A car can amplify a bomb blast when the explosion turns the vehicle’s metal body into a hail of molten shrapnel.

Each car-bomb blast kills about 25 people on average, the report said.

About a third of IED attacks tallied were suicide bombings, a means of delivery that frustrates security forces the world over and was responsible for 18,000 civilian casualties over the past three years.

IEDs are most commonly used by groups challenging established political powers, but other recent reports suggest the barrel bomb is becoming the “crude-but-effective” method for governments to terrify civilians they deem disloyal. As the name suggests, it consists of a barrel stuffed with explosives and shrapnel, usually dropped from helicopters.

Human Rights Watch has condemned both the Iraqi and Syrian governments for indiscriminate attacks on unarmed civilians using the bombs. Both governments are locked in brutal battles with the militant group Islamic State, which controls territory and towns straddling the borders of both countries.