Strange story emerges about Isis using birds as suicide bombers

The plan claims the peregrine falcon would fit the bill perfectly. Photo / Getty Images

According to the news site Vocativ, which mines social media for its scoops, an online sympathiser of the Islamic State proposed a somewhat bizarre new tactic for the militant group over the weekend. Using the messaging app Telegram, this apparent Islamic State loyalist uploaded what Vocativ deemed a "comprehensive plan" to target coalition aircraft operating against the extremists in Iraq.

Vocativ admits the proposal - "A New Way To Down Warplanes" - "looked like a trolling attempt at first, but at a second glance, it's a detailed (and creative, albeit repulsive) plan" that "offers suggestions about which birds and explosives would be best to use, and about how to smuggle the birds into a war zone."

Here's more:

"The plan isn't lacking in morbid enthusiasm. The idea is to strap a 'lightweight' bomb to a bird with a so-called 'suicide belt,' and train the bird in six (easy?) steps to fly into a jet and detonate an explosive-effectively making the bird a suicide bomber. The ISIS loyalist suggests using an Urea bomb, which he theorizes was the explosive used by ISIS to down the Russian Metrojet plane that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 on board in late October.

After conducting the necessary research, the loyalist wrote, he found two species of birds that particularly fit his criteria for height and speed: the peregrine falcon and Rüppell's vulture. The only problem with the vulture, though, is that it resides in Africa (oops!), although it 'can be smuggled or found in zoos across Syria and Iraq,' the plan declares."

As absurd as this all is, it has a kind of precedent. Reports earlier this year suggested that some members of the militant group were strapping explosive devices to chickens, though the farcical images that appeared at the time could not be confirmed.

What this would-be radical's proposal more directly echoes is a subplot in the acclaimed tragicomic 2010 British film Four Lions, in which a bunch of buffoonish British jihadists attempt to hatch terror plots.