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Home Publications Chapters Black Widows: The Chechen Female Suicide Terrorists

Black Widows: The Chechen Female Suicide Terrorists

Memorandum No. 84, Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, August 2006

Anne Speckhard
Khapta Akhmedova

Chechnya’s notorious “Black Widows” have been active since June 7, 2000 when the first Chechen female suicide bombers, Khava Barayeva, cousin of well-known Chechen field commander Arbi Barayev, and Luisa Magomadova drove a truck filled with explosives into the temporary headquarters of an elite OMON (Russian Special Forces) detachment in the village of Alkhan Yurt in Chechnya. The attack resulted in two dead and five wounded. Since then Chechen female terrorists have been involved in twenty-two of the twenty-seven suicide attacks (81 percent of the total number) attributed to Chechen rebels. There were a total of 110 bombers in the period reviewed, forty-seven of whom were women (43 percent of the total; see table 1).


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  • Research

    • Topics
      • Israel and the Global Powers
      • Israel-United States Relations
      • Glazer Israel-China Policy Center
      • Russia
      • Europe
      • Iran and the Shi'ite Axis
      • Iran
      • Lebanon and Hezbollah
      • Syria
      • Yemen and the Houthi Movement
      • Iraq and the Iraqi Shiite Militias
      • Conflict to Agreements
      • Israeli-Palestinian Relations
      • Hamas and the Gaza Strip
      • Peace Agreements and Normalization in the Middle East
      • Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States
      • Turkey
      • Egypt
      • Jordan
      • Israel’s National Security Policy
      • Military and Strategic Affairs
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      • Jewish-Arab Relations in Israel
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