Tag Archives: Acid

Britain to limit acid sales after steep rise in assaults

Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd speaks at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) – Britain will limit sales of sulphuric acid and outlaw the sale of such corrosive substances to children after a spate of assaults and its possible use to make bombs, interior minister Amber Rudd said on Tuesday.

Much to public alarm, the number of incidents where assailants have used acid has risen sharply, with police figures suggesting there had been more than 400 corrosive substance attacks in the six months to April this year.

Many victims were left with serious, life-changing injuries as a result.

The proposed new laws will make it illegal to sell the most harmful corrosive substances to under-18s while the carrying of acid in public without good reason will be banned.

“Acid attacks are absolutely revolting,” Home Secretary Rudd told party activists at the Conservative Party Conference in the northern English city of Manchester. “You have all seen the pictures of victims that never fully recover; endless surgeries, lives ruined.”

Rudd said she also intended to “drastically” limit the public sale of sulphuric acid because of its use in making the highly volatile triacetone triperoxide (TATP), known as “mother of Satan”, which is often used as a detonator in home-made explosives.

Police say TATP was used in an attempted bombing on a packed London underground train last month which injured 30 people. The bomb engulfed a carriage in flames but failed to explode fully.

At the moment, businesses that sell sulphuric acid have to tell the police of any theft or loss, but the new law would mean anyone wanting to buy it above a certain concentration would have to have a Home Office license.

Rudd also announced plans to further restrict the online sale of knives to under-18s following a significant increase in the number of stabbings.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Stephen Addison)

Acid Thrown In Afghani Girls’ Faces For Going To School

Three Afghani girls, aged between 16 and 18, are recovering after Islamists threw acid into their faces because they were attending school.

Two of the girls remain in critical condition at Harat’s Noor hospital according to an official who spoke with CNN.

Two men approached the girls on motorcycles while they were walking to school.  They told the girls as they threw the acid that it was their punishment for going to school.  The attackers are still at large and a provincial police chief told reporters they were working hard to find them.

The girls attended one of the biggest girl’s schools in the provincial capital.

Islamic terror groups like the Taliban are against women receiving education.  The United Nations reported that only 12 percent of Afghani women are literate.

In the past, militants have reported being paid large sums of money by the Taliban for carrying out acid attacks on young girls.  In a 2008 attack, the captured attackers told police they were paid $1,265 by Taliban officials in Pakistan for crossing into Afghanistan to make the attack.

The Taliban forbid women from gaining any education during their rule of Afghanistan.