The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Read online

  The 50 Worst

  Terrorist Attacks

  The 50 Worst

  Terrorist Attacks

  * * *

  EDWARD F. MICKOLUS AND SUSAN L. SIMMONS

  Praeger Security International

  Copyright 2014 by Edward F. Mickolus and Susan L. Simmons

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mickolus, Edward F.

  The 50 worst terrorist attacks / Edward F. Mickolus and Susan L. Simmons.

  pages cm

  Includes indexes.

  ISBN 978-1-4408-2827-0 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4408-2828-7 (ebook)

  1. Terrorism—History. I. Simmons, Susan L. II. Title. III. Title: Fifty worst terrorist attacks.

  HV6431.M487 2014

  363.32509—dc23 2014004392

  ISBN: 978-1-4408-2827-0

  EISBN: 978-1-4408-2828-7

  18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

  This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.

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  All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other U.S. government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the authors’ views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

  To our parents

  * * *

  Contents

  Preface

  Introduction

  The 1960s

  The 1970s

  March 31, 1970: Japan Airlines Flight 351 Hijacking to North Korea

  September 6, 1970: Dawson's Field Multiple Aerial Hijackings

  May 30, 1972: Machine Gun Attack in Lod Airport

  September 5, 1972: Munich Olympics Attack

  May 15, 1974: Ma'alot Massacre

  December 21, 1975: Vienna OPEC Hostage-Taking

  June 27, 1976: Entebbe

  October 6, 1976: Cubana Flight 455 Bombing

  October 13, 1977: Landshut Hijacking and GSG 9 Rescue in Mogadishu

  March 16, 1978: Aldo Moro Kidnapping

  August 27, 1979: Mountbatten Assassination

  November 4, 1979: Iran Hostage Crisis

  November 20, 1979: Mecca Grand Mosque Takeover

  The 1980s

  August 2, 1980: Bologna Train Bombing

  October 6, 1981: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat Assassination

  April 18, 1983: U.S. Embassy in Beirut Bombing

  October 23, 1983: U.S. Marine and French Paratrooper Barracks in Lebanon Bombing

  June 23, 1985: Air India Flight 182 Bombing

  October 7, 1985: Achille Lauro Seajacking

  April 5, 1986: Berlin La Belle Discotheque Bombing

  September 5, 1986: Pan Am 73 Hijacking

  December 21, 1988: Lockerbie Bombing

  September 19, 1989: French Airline UTA 772 Bombing

  The 1990s

  March 17, 1992: Buenos Aires Israeli Embassy Bombing

  February 26, 1993: World Trade Center Bombing

  July 18, 1994: Buenos Aires AIMA Bombing

  March 20, 1995: Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas Attack

  April 19, 1995: Oklahoma City Bombing

  June 14, 1995: Budennovsk, Russia, Hospital Hostage-Taking

  November 23, 1996: Ethiopian Airlines ET961 Hijacking

  December 17, 1996: Japan Embassy in Peru Takeover

  November 17, 1997: Luxor Attack

  August 7, 1998: Tanzania and Kenya U.S. Embassy Bombings

  August 15, 1998: Omagh, Northern Ireland, Bombing

  The 2000s

  October 12, 2000: Yemen USS Cole Attack

  September 11, 2001: Al Qaeda U.S. World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania Hijackings

  October 12, 2002: Indonesia Bali Bombings

  October 23, 2002: Moscow Theater Takeover

  May 12, 2003: Riyadh Western Compound Bombings

  February 27, 2004: Philippines Superferry 14 Bombing

  March 11, 2004: Madrid Train Bombings

  August 24, 2004: Two Russian Planes Bombing

  September 1, 2004: Russia Beslan School Takeover

  July 7, 2005: U.K. Subway Bombings

  July 23, 2005: Sharm el-Sheikh Bombing

  November 26, 2008: India Mumbai Attacks

  The 2010s

  March 29, 2010: Russia Moscow Subway Bombings

  July 11, 2010: Uganda World Cup Bombings

  January 16, 2013: Algerian Gas Plant Takeover

  September 21-24, 2013: Nairobi, Kenya, Westgate Shopping Mall Attack

  The Worst 51-68

  September 4, 1969: Brazil U.S. Ambassador Burke Elbrick Kidnapping

  March 1, 1973: Sudan U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel Assassination

  December 27, 1974: U.S. Ambassador Shelton Party Attack

  December 23, 1975: CIA Chief of Station/Athens Richard Welch Assassination

  March 9, 1977: Takeover of Washington, D.C., Buildings

  September 5, 1977: Hans-Martin Schleyer Kidnapping and Assassination

  1978–1995: The Unabomber

  1985–1986: Lebanon Kidnappings of Westerners

  January 25, 1993: CIA Headquarters Route 123 Entrance Attack

  2001: Anthrax Attacks

  February 27, 2002: India Sabarmati Express Train Firebombing

  March 2, 2004: Baghdad and Karbala Mosques Attack

  October 7, 2004: Sinai Hilton Taba Hotel Suicide Bombing

  July 11, 2006: India Mumbai Train Bombings

  September 20, 2008: Islamabad Marriott Hotel Bombing

  December 30, 2009: Afghanistan Bombing of CIA Khost Base

  October 31, 2010: Iraq Our Lady of Salvation Church Takeover

  July 22, 2011: Oslo Shooting and Bombing Spree

  Unsuccessful Attempts

  May 13, 1981: Attempted Papal Assassination

  January 1995: Bojinka Planned Bombing of 10 U.S.-Bound Planes

  December 15, 1999: Planned Millennium Bombing of Space Needle and Airport

  December 22, 2001: The Shoe Bomber

  2003: Mubtakkar Chemical Weapons Attack on NYC Subway

  August 10, 2006: Planned Liquid Bombings of U.K.-to-U.S. Planes

  December 25, 2009: The Underwear Bomber

  May 1, 2010: Would-Be Bombing of Times Square

  October 29, 2010: Printer Toner Cartridge Bombs on Planes

  February 17, 2012: Would-Be Suicide Bomber at U.S. Capitol

  Bibliography

  Country Index

  Name and Group Index

  * * *

  Preface

  Unfortunately, when considering international terrorism, any list of the worst is a “living document,” requiring continuous adjustment as new incidents occur. When this book was in final editing in late September 2013, three significant attacks needed to be reflected upon and evaluated for the 50 Worst list.

  On Sunday, September 22, 2013, a bombing at a Protestant ch
urch in Peshawar, Pakistan, killed at least 85 people and wounded 141, numbers comparable to other attacks included in the list. The day before saw a wave of bombings in Iraq that led to 96 deaths and an al-Shabaab attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed at least 62 people and injured 175 people, including many foreigners. Although the bombings entailed more deaths, the Kenya attack is a more important milestone in the maturation of international terrorism. Al-Shabaab demonstrated that although it was riven with factionalism, it was able to assemble a multinational strike team that could engage in a sophisticated operation outside its primary sanctuary, involving multiple attack points and a more nuanced style of attack. Not limiting itself to a straightforward multipledeath bombing, al-Shabaab used the Westgate attack to seize international headlines for several days, likely establishing its credentials as a group worthy of its new al Qaeda affiliation and attractive to wannabe jihadis as capable of daring exploits.

  Sadly, the use of terrorism by an individual or group to attempt to achieve political ends continues to gain traction. Whether or not terrorism is an effective coercive tactic in the short term continues to be debated. As a long-term strategy, terrorism can only achieve a Pyrrhic victory so the stated motives of anyone choosing to perpetrate an act of terrorism must be questioned. Destroying lives is the ultimate price and takes resolute malevolence—not virtue or justice.

  What we need are nations filled with Malala Yousafzais.

  We welcome comments from our readers, particularly regarding refining the criteria for inclusion, which incidents we might have missed, and any other contributions you have. Please send them to us in care of ABC-CLIO.

  This book is a different writing experience from our previous reference texts and required more patience from family and friends, and the great team at ABC-CLIO. We particularly wish to acknowledge and thank Steve Catalano and Robin Tutt of ABC-CLIO, and Linda Kay Berglund, Susan’s sister, who assisted with the indexing.

  * * *

  Introduction

  During the last 50 years, the world has seen the rise of a particularly virulent threat to international order—terrorist attacks. The theory and several methods of terrorism have long histories, arguably tracing to the Old Testament with the first political assassination; however, the use of terrorism by nonstate actors on so grand a scale is a comparatively recent phenomenon. The authors have written several volumes chronicling transnational terrorism, and we are often asked to rank events according to most important, worst, deadliest, or an alternative superlative. So far we have refused to do so, being hesitant of trivializing these horrific, shocking, and destructive acts. We changed our minds as we found that the reverse may be a more present danger. As a global community, we are so awash in terrorism—through news, academic articles, government reports, fiction and nonfiction books, films, and television shows—that we are at risk of accepting a general climate of terrorism in which we stop recognizing the individual acts and stop feeling for the reality of the victims. To end terrorism, we must not become inured to terrorist acts. This book attempts to direct attention again to individual acts by listing the most important terrorist attacks in history by year within each decade from 1960 to 2013, including the incidents, key actors involved, victims, and government responses. Both domestic and international terrorist attacks are examined within security and political contexts to shed light on how the events unfolded.

  We begin this book’s examination of terrorism with the 1960s, because of that decade’s importance in the evolution of terrorism on several fronts. The 1960s saw the end of the Algerian insurgency, which featured terrorism on a seemingly unrelenting scale. The rise of the Palestinian struggle, with the commencement of different styles of attacks by Fatah, the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and various splinter groups, moved international terrorism to the front pages. Turbulence in the West, spurred by a youthful radical leftist movement, led to the rise of major terrorist groups who went on to infamy for their exploits in the following decades. Types of attacks evolved with the growth of the new groups. Aerial hijacking in the 1960s moved from mere lone nut and simple “take me to (name a country)” transportational capers to more complex operations designed to garner media attention and general horror. Kidnappings of political figures and business executives for more than mere financial gain grew.

  This book uses the definition of terrorism that we have found useful in our previous books. We consider terrorism to be the use or threat of use of violence by any individual or group for political purposes. The perpetrators may be functioning for or in opposition to established governmental authority. A key component of international terrorism is that its ramifications transcend national boundaries, and, in so doing, create an extended atmosphere of fear and anxiety. The effects of terrorism reach national and worldwide cultures as well as the lives of the people directly hurt by the terrorist acts. Violence becomes terrorism when the intention is to influence the attitudes and behavior of a target group beyond the immediate victims. Violence becomes terrorism when its location, the victims, or the mechanics of its resolution result in consequences and implications beyond the act or threat itself.

  Unlike our previous books, we have also included several major domestic terrorist acts whose effects essentially stayed within the borders of one country, although with regional or global media coverage. Listing only international attacks might give a false sense of the extent of terrorism in a country or a period. Much the way incident counts can give a false sense of security or insecurity, so too would merely including international attacks give an inaccurate picture of the worst, however defined (Figure 1).

  In like manner, looking at trends in outliers, such as the worst, can also skew our perceptions. Some have argued that post-9/11 is a new era in terrorism. That may be true for terrorist attacks that can be categorized as worst events, but overall trends in “garden variety” attacks have continued throughout the five most recent decades.

  In addition to the definition of terrorism, we also need to consider what constitutes a worst act. Tallying deaths, injuries, and property damage, while methodologically straightforward, is ultimately unsatisfying. Perpetrators of terrorism are seeking publicity; killing for killing’s sake (although increasing in popularity in recent years among the jihadi culture) doesn’t quite fulfill our intuitive sense of worst. We thus have sought to include incidents that spilled ink and pixels as well as blood and treasure. As a sanity check, we have shared our 50 Worst list with experts in the field of terrorism, as well as various worthies in other fields to ensure that the terrorists’ message did get through to others beyond the terrorism-watching set. Inherent to such a method, however, is a somewhat Western-centric bias. Many media outlets that we used in putting together the list are Western-based. One also tends to consider worst those incidents nearer to one’s own interests; an attack that injures you or kills one of your family, colleagues, or friends is for you the worst event possible, although it may recede or vanish statistically when compared with multiple-casualty tragedies.

  Figure 1 International Terrorism: 1968–2011

  We have also included some incidents because they created a new technique; attacked a new type of target; crossed a moral, technological, or operational threshold; or otherwise added to the repertoire of terrorism in general. These novel attacks tended not to be as deadly as some incidents that did not make the cut, but are more historically important in the evolution of terrorism as a technique and security problem.

  Our criteria for inclusion is limited to single events or events that are so tied together—multiple hijackings or bombings on the same day—as to have been treated as a single incident. Thus, the 1970 Dawson’s Field hijackings and the 9/11 attacks, although involving four separate hijack teams, nonetheless had the effect of a single operation. Serial attacks by a single perpetrator or unknown individuals, such as letter bombers sending scores of parcel bombs—consider the Unabomber’s 17-year campaign or the Am
erithrax attacks of October 2001—while cumulatively important did not include a specific event that rises to the level of others included in the 50 Worst. In the interests of comprehensiveness, however, we have included such events in a separate section. Similarly, we have included a separate discussion of incidents that were foiled before they could achieve the effects intended by the perpetrators.

  Although the 50 Worst are notable for their deadliness, terrorist attacks overall—at least the 13,000-plus international attacks covered by the ITERATE dataset—rarely include casualties in the dozens, much less hundreds. As shown in Figure 2, even the worst year of the half-century tallied just over 4,000 casualties. Given the potential threat inherent in chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN), and cyber attacks, terrorists more often than not have kept their attacks under a certain deadly threshold.

  Moreover, looking strictly at international attacks, Americans have tended to be disproportionately popular targets of terrorists, whether in garden-variety bombings and shootings or in the 50 Worst spectaculars. Some of the domestic attacks that rose to the level of 50 Worst, however, did not include Americans (Figure 3).

  Figure 2 International Terrorism Casualties: 1968–2009

  Figure 3 Frequency of International and American Related Terrorist Incidents: 1968–2009

  Expanding the years covered by our list to pre-1960 include prototerrorist incidents, such as assassinations and anarchist bombing campaigns. Examples include the 1865 assassination of American president Abraham Lincoln by bitter-enders, the 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand that sparked World War I, and the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel by Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary group active in the 1930s and 1940s.

  We have seen several trends in the 50 Worst that reflect shifts in terrorist behavior in general over the past half-century. Among them has been a shift in the type of terrorist tactic(s) employed. Terrorism has generally been a battle between offense and defense. Once security forces determine methods to harden a likely target against a certain type of attack, terrorists have generally not thrown in the towel. Rather, they have innovated, constantly putting the burden on the defensive forces to keep up.