Hero Police Dog “Diesel” Gives Life to Thwart Terror Attack

Dog lovers everywhere have been mourning the Belgian Malinois on social media. 

Nov 18, 2015

Diesel was a seven-year-old Belgian Malinois and part of the team of French police who likely thwarted new ISIS-style attacks when they raided an apartment in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis Monday night. The siege against the terror suspects took place in the early morning, and before it was over two were dead and the authorities had seven in custody. 

Human commandos were injured during the operation, but Wednesday morning, it was Diesel who  seized public sympathy, after she was named in a tweet from the French National Police: “Diesel, 7-year-old malinois, #RAID assault dog was killed by terrorists in the current operation #SaintDenis.”

A follow-up tweet from the force stated that the dogs trained to assist in assaults and search for explosives were “indispensable” during missions such as the one that took place in Saint-Denis.


As the Independentreported, dog-lovers worldwide seized on the tweet immediately, re-tweeting it thousands of times and pushing “RIP Diesel” into Twitter’s top ten trending topics. BuzzFeed curated several examples of posts from pet-lovers but noted that police apparently haven’t released photos of the Diesel herself. 

It wasn’t clear mid-day Wednesday if the raid took down Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-born ISIS militant suspected of organizing the attacks in Paris, but Diesel was obviously a vital part of an operation that took out plenty of bad guys. 

We salute Diesel, who did her job till the very end, being the essence of a hero. 

Photos by Police Nationale of France / Twitter

Share: 
Tags: