Cara Anna, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Saturday that all eight of the attackers in Friday night's co-ordinated, deadly assaults wore identical explosives vests with the explosive TATP, which has been called the "mother of Satan" because of its volatility.
NEW YORK -- Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Saturday that all eight of the attackers in Friday night's co-ordinated, deadly assaults wore identical explosives vests with the explosive TATP, which has been called the "mother of Satan" because of its volatility.
TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, is an improvised explosive that also
was used in the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 commuters.
The U.S. government's National Counterterrorism Center lists TATP as a
common explosive and describes it as "relatively easy to synthesize."
Experts have said that tracing the materials used to make the explosive
can be difficult because they are so readily available in stores.
The counterterrorism centre's website
describes the explosive as a mixture of "hydrogen peroxide and acetone
with the addition of an acid, such as sulfuric, nitric, or hydrochloric
acid."
It says TATP "can be very unstable and sensitive to heat, shock, and friction."
The explosive also was used by Richard Reid, who tried unsuccessfully
to detonate a bomb in his shoe during a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001.
All eight of the Paris attackers died, seven in suicide bombings.
Three suicide bombs targeted spots around the Stade de France
stadium, where French President Francois Hollande was watching a
France-Germany soccer match. Another attacker detonated a suicide bomb
on Boulevard Voltaire, near the Bataclan music hall where dozens of
people were killed by gunmen, the prosecutor's office said.
And as police closed in on the music hall, three attackers detonated
explosive belts, killing themselves, according to Paris police chief
Michel Cadot.
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