The major terrorist acts of Modern History

Date	Place	Characteristic
24 June 1894	France	President Marie-François-Sadi Carnot of France is assassinated at Lyon, France, by an Italian anarchist and is succeeded by Jean Casimir-Périer.
14 September 1911	Russian Empire	The Russian prime minister, Peter Stolypin, is assassinated by a revolutionary, and on 19 September the moderate Vladimir Kokovtsov is appointed prime minister.
28 June 1914	Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary	Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary (50) and his wife are assassinated at Sarajevo, Bosnia, by Gavrilo Princip, an 18-year-old Bosnian Serb student linked with the Serbian nationalist society ‘the Black Hand’. The death of Archduke Ferdinand is to spark off World War I.
20 May 1920	Mexico	President Venustiano Carranza of Mexico is assassinated. In response the US government suspends diplomatic relations with Mexico. Adolfo de la Huerta takes office as provisional president of Mexico.
25 September 1959	Ceylon	Following the assassination of Solomon Bandaranaike, prime minister of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), by a Buddhist monk, he is succeeded by Wijayananda Dahanayake.
19 September 1970	Israel, Jordan, UK, West Germany, Switzerland	Palestinian hijackers blow up three aircraft (two hijacked 6 September, one 9 September) at Dawson's Field, Jordan. On 30 September the remaining hostages go free, after Britain, West Germany, and Switzerland release their Palestinian prisoners.
5 September 1972	West Germany, Israel	Eight members of the Palestinian Black September guerrilla group attack the Olympic village in Munich, West Germany, killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine hostage; they issue demands for the release of 200 Palestinians from Israeli jails. Five terrorists and all nine hostages are killed when West German police storm the compound the next day.
13–17 September 1974	Netherlands	Japanese ‘Red Army’ terrorists in the Netherlands take French diplomats hostage in The Hague. On 17 September, France and the Netherlands pay a ransom for their release.
29 November 1974	UK	The Prevention of Terrorism Act is passed in Britain following a spate of Irish Republican Army (IRA) outrages. Police are given power to hold terrorist suspects for five days without charge and suspects can be banned from the British mainland or deported to Northern Ireland.
12 October 1984	UK	An Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb explodes at the Grand Hotel, in Brighton, England, during the Conservative Party conference, killing 4, injuring 32, and narrowly missing the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. A fifth victim dies on 13 November.
31 October 1984	India	Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India 1966–77 and 1980–84 is assassinated in New Delhi, India (66). She is killed by extremist Sikhs among her bodyguards, apparently in response to the storming of the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar by Indian government troops.
21 December 1988	UK, USA	A terrorist bomb explodes on a Pan Am Boeing 747 airliner flying over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing all 259 passengers on board and 11 people on the ground.
31 August 1994	Northern Ireland, UK	The Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland announces its complete cessation of violence (the British government lifts its broadcasting ban on representatives of Sinn Fein on 16 September).
31 March 1997	USA	The trial of Timothy McVeigh, charged with the Oklahoma City bombing of 19 April 1995, opens in Denver, Colorado; on 2 June, McVeigh is found guilty and on 13 June he is sentenced to death.
22 April 1997	Peru	Troops storm the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, ending the hostage crisis which began on 17 December 1996; all 14 Tupac Amarú guerrillas are killed.
8 June 2000	Greece	Members of Greek guerrilla group November 17 shoot dead British diplomat Stephen Saunders in Athens, Greece. Fellow UN countries condemn the Greek government for failing to act against such terrorist groups.
31 January 2001	Netherlands Scotland	A Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands finds one of two Libyan suspects, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, guilty of murdering 270 people when a Pan-Am airliner blew up over Lockerbie in December 1988. His co-defendant is found not guilty.
11 June 2001	USA	Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted killing 168 people in the Oklahoma bomb atrocity in 1995, is executed by lethal injection in Terre Haute, Indiana.
11 September 2001	USA	In the world's worst-ever terrorist atrocity, Islamic extremists launch suicide attacks on landmarks in the USA using hijacked civil airliners. Two aircraft are flown into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center, which subsequently collapse, and another hits the Pentagon (defence department) in Washington, DC. A fourth jet crashes in Pennsylvania before reaching any specific target. Around 3,000 people are thought to have been killed in the attacks and ensuing devastation.
11–30 September 2001		The US government calls the 11 September terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, an act of war and pledges military retaliation against known terrorist networks and their state sponsors. With its allies' backing, US forces begin to concentrate around Afghanistan where the chief suspect, Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization, are thought to enjoy the protection of the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime.
October 2001	USA	In the USA fear of biological terrorism spreads as cases of exposure to anthrax by mail are confirmed in Florida, New York, and in Washington, DC, where a contaminated letter is sent to the leader of the Senate Tom Daschle and the House of Representatives is temporarily closed.
12 May 2003	Saudi Arabia	Suicide bombers in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh target three compounds housing Western expatriate workers and their families, killing at least 34 people including themselves. About 190 are injured. The operation is believed to have been planned and executed by the al-Qaeda international terrorist network.
12–14 May 2003	Russia	In two terrorist incidents in Russia's troubled republic of Chechnya, suicide bombers believed to be Chechen separatists target a government security service building and, two days later, attempt to kill the Moscow-backed head of the Chechen administration at a Muslim festival. Around 80 people are believed killed in the attacks.
16 May 2003	Morocco	In Casablanca, Morocco, 12 suicide bombers thought to be Islamic fundamentalists linked to the al-Qaeda international terrorist network kill about 30 other people and injure many more in five coordinated explosions at a hotel, a nightclub, a Jewish community centre and cemetery, and the Belgian consulate.
August 2003		Having agreed to pay US$2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the 270 people killed in the bombing in 1988 of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland, the Libyan government accepts responsibility for the terrorist incident in a letter to the United Nations (UN) Security Council, paving the way for the lifting of UN sanctions. At the end of the month Libya also reaches agreement with France on reparations for the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Niger.
September 2003	Israel Palestine	Violence continues in the Middle East as Israeli forces target leaders of the militant Islamic Hamas organization and Palestinian suicide bombers kill 15 Israelis in attacks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Yafo. Meanwhile Ahmed Qureia takes over as prime minister of the Palestine National Authority as Mahmoud Abbas resigns having lost a power struggle with President Yassir Arafat. With the peace process in tatters, the Israeli government threatens to exile or otherwise ‘remove’ the Palestinian president. A United Nations Security Council resolution rebuking Israel for the threat is vetoed by the USA.
October 2003	Israel Palestine Syria	In the Middle East a Palestinian suicide bomber kills 20 Israelis and Arabs in a restaurant in Haifa. Israeli military retaliation includes the first direct air attack on Syrian territory since 1973 and subsequent heavy assaults on Palestinian targets in Gaza. Palestinian militants launch a bomb attack on a US embassy convoy driving through Gaza, killing three US officials. Israel's army chief of staff is critical of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policies towards the Palestinians.
7 July 2005	England	In a major coordinated terrorist attack on London, England, three bombs explode on the city's underground railway network and another on a bus, killing 56 people including the bombers. Three of the suicide bombers are subsequently identified on surveillance cameras as British Muslims.
13–14 October 2005	Russia	In Russia's volatile Caucasian region, Islamic militants launch a series of armed attacks on the town of Nalchik in the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. More than 100 people are killed in two days of fighting before the security services regain control. Chechen separatists claim responsibility.
February 2007	Iraq	The high daily death toll in Iraq from sectarian and insurgent violence continues unabated. At the end of the month, in a significant change of policy, the US government says that it will talk to neighbouring Iran and Syria about stabilising Iraq. The UK government meanwhile announces a partial troop withdrawal from the south of the country, and the Iraqi government reaches a landmark agreement on sharing out the country's oil wealth between its Kurdish, Sunni Muslim and Shia populations.
August 2007	Iraq	In Iraq, in the most deadly single insurgent atrocity since the start of the war in 2003, the mostly Kurdish Yazidi religious minority living in the northwest of the country are targeted in co-ordinated bomb attacks on 14 August, killing over 500 people and injuring hundreds more.
27 December 2007	Pakistan	Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the main opposition Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in a suicide attack at an election rally in Rawalpindi, enraging her supporters and triggering violence in cities across Pakistan. The government blames Islamist militants.

Appendix III