A peek into Iraq's dark world shows that the latest weapon preference of terrorists are "sticky bombs", which are the size of a man's fist but effective enough to make Iraqis go numb with panic.

According to the New York Times, the light, portable and easy to lay bombs are called obwah lasica, Arabic for "sticky bomb" and are fast becoming the device of choice for a range of insurgent groups in the war-torn nation.

The bombs are attached to magnet or a strip of gummy adhesive and tucked quickly under the bumper of a car or into a chink in a blast wall, the paper said, adding that since they are detonated remotely, they rarely harm the person who lays them.

With security in Baghdad improving, the small and furtive bomb though less lethal than entire car or even thick suicide belts packed with explosive contribute, in the midst of an uptick in violence, to a growing feeling of unease in Baghdad.

"You take a bit of C4 or some other type of compound...go into a hardware store, take the explosive and combine it with an accelerant. Put some glass or marble or bits of metal in front of it and you've basically got a homemade Claymore (a common antipersonnel mine)," Lt Col Steven Stover, a spokesman for the United States military in Baghdad was quoted as saying.

Sticky bombs, the paper says, are not an Iraqi innovation. "Limpet mines" were attached to the sides of ships during World War II and magnetic booby traps were used during the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Sticky bombs get popular

Magnetic IEDs or improvised explosive devices were first used in Iraq in late 2004 or early in 2005, according to the American military.

Sticky bombs have become steadily more common since the start of this year- from an average of two explosions a week caused by them this spring to about five per week more recently, Colonel Stover said.

Citing figures from Iraq's Interior Ministry, the Times says sticky bombs killed 3 people and wounded 18 in Baghdad alone during the month of July. In October, 9 people were killed and 46 more were injured by sticky bombs.

Casualty rates caused by sticky bombs are still relatively low, the paper notes but quoted Col Stover as saying that recent raids on insurgent groups have uncovered caches of the bombs, even "sticky bomb factories".

Magnetic IEDs have recently been made an explicit part of the training that American soldiers in Baghdad receive.

"We make our soldiers aware of the latest threat and the latest IED threat is these magnetic IEDs," he said. "We put them in their hands and say, 'Hey, soldier, this is what this thing looks like.' They're sometimes used against us our vehicles are metallic, too."

"The safety barriers, the walls themselves, have largely taken away these catastrophic attacks that you saw in the past," Colonel Stover told the paper. "The smaller bombs are not capable of causing that catastrophic attack. But they're causing a lot of panic."

General Jihad al-Jabieri, an explosives expert at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, was quoted as saying that "sticky bombs emerged at the beginning of this year after a clear drop in attacks caused by car bombs, IEDs and explosive vests."

"Military operations reduced the availability of the explosive materials that were used in car bombs," General Jabieri said.