Muriel Degauque

Who was Muriel Degauque?

Muriel Degauque was a Belgian woman from Charleroi and a convert to Islam. La Derniere Heure, a Belgian newspaper, claimed on December 1, 2005 that she was a suicide bomber in Iraq. According to Belgian authorities, a Belgian woman committed a suicide car bomb attack on November 9, 2005 against a U.S. military convoy south of Baghdad. The Belgian was the only person killed, but one American soldier was injured.

Belgian authorities subsequently questioned her family and determined Degauque as the bomber. A bakery worker, she married a Muslim man and quickly became radical in her religious views. The couple moved into Iraq from the Syrian border, presumably to join the Iraqi insurgency. Degauque's husband failed to detonate his explosive belt and was killed in a separate incident by US troops.