CARnage on wheels: How Delhi’s 1st suicide car bombing reveals an unseen, deadly and hard

NEW DELHI: This is the first time Delhi has witnessed an SVBIED (Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device) attack. That's bad news for anti-terror agencies as these blasts are not only extremely difficult to prevent but are deadlier than those triggered by person-borne devices. A worrying truth about VBIEDs is that the killer element is often not metal pellets or nails, but parts of the car. Owing to deadly secondary fragmentation, the parts turn into lethal projectiles that maximise casualties and destruction far beyond the initial radius of a blast. Thus, a vehicle packed with explosives remains not just a container, it becomes an integral, weaponised component of the blast. There have been very few such attacks in Delhi or the rest of the country, Pulwama being an in