Terrorist groups have used suicide bombers to carry out deadly attacks against their targets of choice for many years. The use of female suicide bombers is a fairly recent phenomenon. The first known terrorist attack by a female bomber occurred in Lebanon on April 9, 1985, when Sana'a Mehaydali, a 16-year-old member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), drove a bomb-laden truck into an Israeli Defense Force convoy, killing two Israeli soldiers. Since then, several other terrorist groups have used female bombers to carry out suicide missions. Some of these groups include the Liberation Tigers of Tamil

Eelam (LTTE), the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Chechen rebels, Al Aqsa Martyrs, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and, most recently, Hamas.

The use of female bombers has been growing internationally, ...