Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

ISLAMIC JIHAD • 309juring 44 others, including another American. The PIJ also conducted103 rocket attacks, killing three and injuring 24, and two machinegunattacks, killing only one person. In the first three months of 2007the PIJ attempted one unsuccessful suicide bombing but succeededin another in which a Palestinian hitchhiker accepted a ride from anIsraeli on a motorbike and reached Eilat where he detonated his bombin a bakery, killing four people. The PIJ also conducted 17 rocket attacks,killing none and injuring only one person.The PIJ has collaborated on at least eight occasions with the alAqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in rocket attacks on Israel. These attackshave used Quds-III, Qassem, and Katyusha rockets, as well as occasionalmortars or rocket-propelled grenades, and have usually beenlaunched from the Gaza Strip toward the nearby cities of Sderot andAshkelon, as well as smaller nearby Israeli towns and kibbutzim.Islamic Jihad has been a target of frequent crackdowns by thePalestinian Authority and has not held itself to be bound by the ceasefiresdeclared by either Hamas or al Fatah.4. Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine: Another nom deguerre of Hezbollah used when three American professors, RobertPolhill, Alan Steen, and Jesse Turner, and a U.S. resident, MithileshwarSingh, were kidnapped in Beirut on 24 January 1987. Singh wasreleased on 3 October 1988; Polhill on 22 April 1990; Turner on 22October 1991; and Steen on 3 December 1991.5. Islamic Jihad in Yemen: A little-known group, also called theIslamic Army of Aden-Abyan, or Aden-Abyan Islamic Jihad, attemptedin the later 1990s to enforce its own version of Islamic lawin the villages surrounding Aden in Yemen. It came to internationalattention when it began kidnapping foreign tourists to pressure thegovernment of Yemen. The group apparently has ties to al Qa’edaand has attacked the ships of the United States and other nationswithin the territorial waters of Yemen using suicide attacks withexplosives-laden boats.On 28 December 1998 Yemeni kidnappers claiming to be partof the Islamic Jihad in Yemen seized 16 foreign tourists in AbyanProvince and demanded the release of 10 Islamic Jihad militants andforeign recruits captured by the national police in a crackdown onthe group’s training camp in Abyan Province. On 29 December 1998Yemeni security forces stormed the kidnappers’ stronghold, in thecourse of which four of the hostages were killed. Altogether three