An airplane after taking off from Seville’s San Pablo Airport Marcelo del Pozo / ReutersOn November 28, 2002, al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists aimed two shoulder-fired missiles at an Israeli commercial airliner as it took off from the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya. Though both missed, the event marked the first missile attack on a civilian airliner outside of a conflict zone. Had the terrorists succeeded, all 271 civilians on the plane would very likely have been killed. The weapon used, Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, had first been developed in the 1940s as surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles that could be fired …read more
Source: The Atlantic
