ISIS Fighter Aims Rocket Launcher — Rocket Blows Him Up Instead

A new video appeared online Tuesday, appearing to show an ISIS fighter setting up a shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade launcher, aiming it out a large hole in the wall of what appears to be an empty or abandoned building — and then receiving a very unpleasant surprise.

The video, which could be disturbing to some viewers, shows the rocket exploding before it fires at whatever target was in the alleged ISIS fighter’s sites. The video abruptly cuts as soon as the explosive rocket detonates.

The fate of the ISIS fighter and the camera operator recording what may have been an attempt to produce footage for an ISIS propaganda video are unknown — as are any further details on the context of the video, such a where and when the violent and presumably fatal accident was filmed, and who retrieved the footage and released it on the internet.

What is known is that the RPG — which is an abbreviation for the Russian Ruchnoy Protivotankovyy Granatomyot, rather than the more commonly used “rocket propelled grenade” — remains one the world’s most lethal combat weapons, due to its combination of explosive power and relative ease of use. provided the missile doesn’t blow up in the users face, as happens in this video.

The RPG, for example, was the weapon used by opposition fighters in Somalia to shoot down a United States Blackhawk helicopter in the incident that became known as the Battle of Mogadishu, later dramatized in the 2001 Hollywood film Blackhawk Down.

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Three RPG weapons were also fired by Taliban insurgents at a U.S. Chinook helicopter on August 6, 2011, killing 38 United States and Afghan soldiers — the worst one-day death toll for the United States in the Afghanistan conflict.

The RPG weapon was originally developed to destroy tanks, but has since found numerous other, even deadlier uses. ISIS had reportedly been used by ISIS to carry out particularly brutal executions of so-called “spies.”

But in addition to the RPG, ISIS has used propaganda as one of its chief weapons, producing a relentless series of often gruesome and gory clips used as propaganda both in recruiting foreign Islamic radicals for the war in Syria, and for attempting to frighten citizens of western nations with dire and chilling threats.

On the eve of a crucial vote in the British parliament Wednesday, in which Britain could opt to join neighboring France as well as the United States in an aerial bombing campaign against ISIS inside of Syria, a new ISIS threat surfaced in the terror group’s official propaganda magazine, Dabiq.

The magazine article declared that any country, which joins in the bombing campaign against ISIS, “will be targeted in the coming months” for terror attacks similar to the Paris attacks of November 13.

“France and those who follow its course should know they remain the principle targets of ISIS and they will continue to smell the odor of death for having taken lead of the crusade, for having dared insult our prophet, for bragging about fighting Islam in France and having hit Muslims on the land of the Caliphate with their planes which did them no good in the smelly streets of Paris.”

On the eve of Britain’s contentious parliamentary vote, U.K. Defense Minister Michael Fallon said that the threat form ISIS was “instensifying.”

“Let me put it this way,” Fallon told parliament’s defense committee. there were some 150 ISIL-inspired attacks – either ISIL-inspired or ISIL-directed – around the world last year.” ISIL is an alternative name for ISIS.

In an address in Paris on Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama also warned of the continuing ISIS threat, saying that the Syria-based Islamic extremist group “is going to continue to be a deadly organization because of its social media, the resources that it has, and the networks of experiences fighters that it possesses. It’s going to continue to be a serious threat for some time to come.”

[Featured Photo via ISIS Online Video Capture]