An Islamist terrorist group claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in Rijeka, Croatia in October 1995.
RIJEKA, CROATIA – The Balkans have been known for centuries for instability: you can add jihadis to the list of unhelpful actors.
Rarely in recent Western history do we come across a complete breakdown of civil order and governance as we saw in the Balkans in the 1990s. The dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, loosely aligned with the Soviet block, led to the creation of several new (albeit not really new) nations, some of which fared well (Slovenia) and others less so (Bosnia). The latter in particular plummeted into a maelstrom of violence: civil war, massacres, mass rapes and hateful religious intolerance.
Serbian and Croatian Christian extremists targeted Bosnian Muslims for the most part, and in response a wave of ‘foreign fighters’ from all over the Islamic world came to the aid of their co-religionists. This was in essence the beginning of a phenomenon we are still struggling to deal with today.
These terrorists did on occasion carry out attacks throughout the region. On this day in 1995 a suicide bomber drove a vehicle into a police station in Rijeka in Croatia, on the Adriatic coast. Although 29 people were injured, the terrorist was the only fatality.
Due to an error made by the terrorist group, the bombing did not cause fatalities, aside from the suicide bomber himself. The police headquarters was located on a higher ground than the parking lot itself, and the Fiat 131 had neither the space and velocity, nor the horsepower, to climb the stairs and destroy the police station wall
The Egyptian group Al Gama’aa Al Islamiyah claimed the attack: I find this odd as I was not aware that particular organisation was active in the Balkans in the 1990s. I suppose that just goes to show that when it comes to terrorism there are no borders.
