Mass murder
Encyclopedia
Mass murder is the act of murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

ing a large number of people (four or more), typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location in which a number of victims are killed by an individual or more.

Mass murder may be committed by individuals or organizations. Mass murder may also be defined as the intentional and indiscriminate murder of a large number of people by government agents. Examples are the shooting of unarmed protestors, the carpet bombing
Carpet bombing
Carpet bombing is a large aerial bombing done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. The phrase invokes the image of explosions completely covering an area, in the same way that a carpet covers a floor. Carpet bombing is usually achieved by dropping many...

 of cities, the lobbing of grenades into prison cells and the random execution of civilians. Mass murderers are different than spree killer
Spree killer
A spree killer is someone who embarks on a murderous assault on two or more victims in a short time in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders."-Definition:According to the...

s, who kill at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders, and serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...

s, who may kill large numbers of people over long periods of time. The largest mass killings in history have been attempts to exterminate entire groups or communities of people, often on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Some of these mass murders have been found to be genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

s and others to be crimes against humanity, but often such crimes have led to few or no convictions of any type.

Mass murder by a state

The concept of state-sponsored mass murder covers a range of potential killings. It is defined as the intentional and indiscriminate murder of a large number of people by government agents. Examples are shooting of unarmed protestors, carpet bombing of cities, lobbing of grenades into prison cells and random execution of civilians. Other examples of state-sponsored mass murder include:
  • Genocide
    Genocide
    Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

     is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group. While precise definition varies among genocide scholars
    Genocide definitions
    This is a list of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. While there are various definitions of the term, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and...

    , the legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations
    United Nations
    The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

     Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
    Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
    The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. It defines genocide in legal terms, and is the culmination of...

     (CPPCG). Since the CPPCG went into effect in 1951 there have been two genocides found to be so in international courts these were the Srebrenica genocide and the Rwandan Genocide
    Rwandan Genocide
    The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...

     (see International prosecution of genocide. There have been a number of other convictions for genocide under municipal laws
    Genocide under municipal laws
    The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into effect in January 1951. Article 5, 6 and 7 of the CPPCG cover obligations that sovereign states that are parties to the convention must undertake to enact:...

    , and a number of genocides in history
    Genocides in history
    Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in...

     – such as the Armenian Genocide
    Armenian Genocide
    The Armenian Genocide—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...

     and the Holocaust
    The Holocaust
    The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

     – are widely seen as genocides, but occurred before the universal acceptance of international law
    International law
    Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...

    s defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948, so those criminals who were convicted of taking part in these historical genocides were found guilty of crimes against humanity and other more specific crimes like murder.
  • Political mass murder or the killing of a particular political group within a country, such as Béla Kun
    Béla Kun
    Béla Kun , born Béla Kohn, was a Hungarian Communist politician and a Bolshevik Revolutionary who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919.- Early life :...

    's ethnic cleansing
    Ethnic cleansing
    Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....

     against Turkish and Crimean Tatars
    Crimean Tatars
    Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...

     and other minorities in 1921-22, White
    White Terror
    White Terror is the violence carried out by reactionary groups as part of a counter-revolution. In particular, during the 20th century, in several countries the term White Terror was applied to acts of violence against real or suspected socialists and communists.-Historical origin: the French...

     and Red Terror
    Red Terror
    The Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. In Soviet historiography, the Red Terror is described as having been officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended about October 1918...

    s, Joseph Stalin
    Joseph Stalin
    Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

    's Great Purge
    Great Purge
    The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

    , Mao Zedong
    Mao Zedong
    Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...

    's Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, Pol Pot
    Pol Pot
    Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....

    's Killing Fields
    The Killing Fields
    The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War ....

    , massacre
    Massacre
    A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...

    s at the partition of India, or the Hama
    Hama massacre
    The Hama massacre occurred in February 1982, when the Syrian army, under the orders of the president of Syria Hafez al-Assad, conducted a scorched earth policy against the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Sunni Muslim community against the regime of al-Assad...

    , Jallianwala Bagh
    Jallianwala Bagh massacre
    The Jallianwala Bagh massacre , also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place in the Jallianwala Bagh public garden in the northern Indian city of Amritsar, and was ordered by Brigadier-General Reginald E.H. Dyer...

    , Tlatelolco
    Tlatelolco massacre
    The Tlatelolco massacre, also known as The Night of Tlatelolco , was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City...

     massacres, and the mass killing of communists by Suharto's New Order
    New Order (Indonesia)
    The New Order is the term coined by former Indonesian President Suharto to characterize his regime as he came to power in 1966. Suharto used this term to contrast his rule with that of his predecessor, Sukarno...

    .
  • Deliberate massacres of captives during wartime by a state's military forces, such as these committed by the Empire of Japan
    Empire of Japan
    The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...

    , the Soviet Union
    Soviet Union
    The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

     and Nazi Germany
    Nazi Germany
    Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

     during the Second Sino-Japanese War
    Second Sino-Japanese War
    The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...

     and World War II
    World War II
    World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

    : the Nanjing Massacre, the Katyn Forest Massacre of Polish
    Poles
    thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

     citizens in 1940 and the massacres of political prisoners after the launch of Operation Barbarossa
    Operation Barbarossa
    Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...

    , the Three Alls Policy
    Three Alls Policy
    The Three Alls Policy was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three alls being: "Kill All", "Burn All" and "Loot All" . In Japanese documents, the policy was originally referred to as...

     and the massacre of Soviet Jews at Babi Yar
    Babi Yar
    Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a...

    .
  • Mass killing of civilians during total war
    Total war
    Total war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population.In the mid-19th century, "total war" was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare...

    , especially via strategic bombing
    Strategic bombing
    Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating an enemy nation-state by destroying its economic ability and public will to wage war rather than destroying its land or naval forces...

    , such as the Bombing of Chongqing
    Bombing of Chongqing
    The bombing of Chongqing was part of a terror bombing operation conducted by Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service on the Chinese provisional capital of Chongqing, authorized by the Imperial General Headquarters.A conservative estimate places the...

    , Bombing of Tokyo, the Blitz
    The Blitz
    The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...

    , the bombing of Dresden
    Bombing of Dresden in World War II
    The Bombing of Dresden was a military bombing by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force and as part of the Allied forces between 13 February and 15 February 1945 in the Second World War...

     and Hamburg
    Bombing of Hamburg in World War II
    The Allied bombing of Hamburg during World War II included numerous strategic bombing missions and diversion/nuisance raids. As a large port and industrial center, Hamburg's shipyards, U-boat pens, and the Hamburg-Harburg area oil refineries were attacked throughout the war...

    , or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
    Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
    During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...

    .
  • Actions in which the state caused the death of large numbers of people, which political scientist
    Political science
    Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

     R. J. Rummel
    R. J. Rummel
    Rudolph Joseph Rummel is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination...

     calls "democide
    Democide
    Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel as "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the...

    ", which, in addition to the cases above, may include man-made disasters caused by the state, such as the Holodomor
    Holodomor
    The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...

     in the Soviet Union
    Soviet Union
    The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

    , and the disastrous effects of the Great Leap Forward
    Great Leap Forward
    The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...

     and the Cultural Revolution
    Cultural Revolution
    The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...

     in the People's Republic of China
    People's Republic of China
    China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

    .

For further historical examples of mass murder, both state-committed and in wartime, see here.

Mass murder by individuals

Mass murderers may fall into any of a number of categories, including killers of family, of coworkers, of students, and of random strangers. Their motives for murder vary. Many other motivations are possible, including the need for attention or fame. Examples of American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 mass murderers include Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who committed the Columbine High School massacre. They killed 13 people—including teacher Dave Sanders—and injured 24 others, three of whom were injured as they escaped the attack...

, Ronald DeFeo, Jr.
Ronald DeFeo, Jr.
Ronald Joseph "Butch" DeFeo, Jr. is an American murderer. He was tried and convicted for the 1974 killings of his father, mother, two brothers and two sisters...

, George Hassell
George Hassell
George Jefferson Hassell was a convicted mass murderer who murdered his wife and eight children on December 5, 1926 in Farwell, Texas.-Family background:...

, Andrew Kehoe
Andrew Kehoe
Andrew Philip Kehoe was an American suicide bomber and murderer who perpetrated the Bath School Disaster on May 18, 1927.- Early life :...

, Howard Unruh
Howard Unruh
Howard Barton Unruh was an American mass murderer who killed 13 people on September 6, 1949, in Camden, New Jersey, when he was 28 years old. Unruh is considered the first single-episode mass murderer in U.S. history. He died in 2009 after a lengthy illness at the age of 88...

, Richard Hickock
Richard Hickock
Richard "Dick" Eugene Hickock was one of two ex-convicts who murdered the four members of the Herbert Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas on November 15, 1959, a crime made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood...

 and Perry Smith
Perry Smith (murderer)
Perry Edward Smith was one of two ex-convicts who murdered four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, United States on November 15, 1959, a crime made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.-Family and early life:Perry Edward Smith was born in Huntington,...

, Richard Speck
Richard Speck
Richard Franklin Speck was a mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on July 14, 1966.- Monmouth, 1941–1950 :...

 and Charles Whitman
Charles Whitman
Charles Joseph Whitman was a student at the University of Texas at Austin and a former Marine who killed 16 people and wounded 32 others during a shooting rampage on and around the university's campus on August 1, 1966....

.

Workers who assault fellow employees are sometimes called "disgruntled workers," but this is often a misnomer, as many perpetrators are ex-workers. They are dismissed from their jobs and subsequently turn up heavily armed and kill their former colleagues. In the 1980s, when two fired postal workers carried out such massacres in separate incidents in the US, the term "going postal
Going postal
Going postal, in American English slang, means becoming extremely and uncontrollably angry, often to the point of violence, and usually in a workplace environment....

" became synonymous with employees snapping and setting out on murderous rampages. One of the 1980s most famous "disgruntled worker" cases involved computer programmer
Programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...

 Richard Farley
Richard Farley
Richard Wade Farley is an American convicted mass murderer. A former employee of Electromagnetic Systems Labs in Sunnyvale, California, he stalked co-worker Laura Black for four years beginning in 1984...

 who, after being fired for stalking one of his co-workers, Laura Black, returned to his former workplace and shot to death seven of his colleagues, although he failed in his attempt to kill Black herself.

In some rare cases mass murders have been committed during prison riot
Prison riot
A prison riot is an act of concerted defiance or disorder by a group of prisoners against the prison administrators, prison officers, or other groups of prisoners in attempt to force change or express a grievance....

s and uprisings. During the February 1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary riot
New Mexico State Penitentiary Riot
The New Mexico Penitentiary Riot, which took place on February 2 and 3, 1980, in the state's maximum security prison south of Santa Fe, was one of the most violent prison riots in the history of the American correctional system: 33 inmates died and more than 200 inmates were treated for injuries...

, 33 inmates were killed. Most of the dead, 23, lived in the Protective Custody Unit, and were killed by other inmates using knives, axes and being burnt alive over a 48-hour period.

Unlike serial killers, there is rarely a sexual motive to individual mass-murderers, with the possible exception of Sylvestre Matuschka
Sylvestre Matuschka
Szilveszter Matuska , was a Hungarian mass murderer and mechanical engineer who made two successful and at least two unsuccessful attempts to derail passenger trains in Hungary, Germany and Austria in 1930 and 1931.-Crimes:Matuska made at least two failed attempts to derail trains in Austria in...

, an Austrian man who apparently derived sexual pleasure from blowing up trains with dynamite, ideally with people in them. His lethal sexual fetish claimed 22 lives before he was caught in 1931.

Vasili Blokhin
Vasili Blokhin
Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin was a Soviet Major-General who served as the chief executioner of the Stalinist NKVD under the administrations of Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria...

's count of 7,000 Polish prisoners shot in 28 days remains one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record.

On July 22, 2011, Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, killed 77 people in two separate attacks in Oslo, Norway. The first attack was a car bomb attack on the national government quarters in Oslo, killing 8 people. Behring Breivik then drove some 40 km to the island of Utoya where a political youth camp was in progress. Dressed as a policeman, he gathered the attendants and then opened fire, leading to the massacre of 69 people over the span of roughly 90 minutes.

Incidences of mass murder that are committed by more than one individual, mostly duos, happen less often than by a single individual but are not uncommon. Examples include Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who committed the Columbine High School massacre. They killed 13 people—including teacher Dave Sanders—and injured 24 others, three of whom were injured as they escaped the attack...

, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden
Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden
Mitchell Scott Johnson and Andrew Douglas Golden are former middle school students who committed the Westside Middle School massacre, killing four students and one teacher, and wounding ten others.-Trial:...

, Hu Wenhai and Liu Haiwang, Lavrynovitch and Obrapalski, and Kumatarō Kido and Yagorō Tani
Kumataro Kido and Yagoro Tani
and were Japanese spree killers who killed 11 people, including an infant, on May 25, 1893, a spree known as . The roots of the killings were both emotional and financial. Kido lost his common-law-wife to a man named Torajirō Matsunaga, whose brother Denjirō bilked money from Kido and assaulted...

.

Mass murder by terrorists

In recent years, terrorists
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

 have performed acts of mass murder to intimidate a society and draw attention to their causes. Examples of major terrorist incidents involving mass murder include:
  • October 6, 1976: Cubana Flight 455
    Cubana Flight 455
    Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down by a terrorist attack on October 6, 1976. All 78 people on board the Douglas DC-8 aircraft were killed in what was then the deadliest terrorist airline attack in the Western hemisphere...

     - 73 killed
  • November 20, 1979: Grand Mosque Seizure
    Grand Mosque Seizure
    The Grand Mosque Seizure on November 20, 1979, was an armed attack and takeover by Islamist dissidents of the Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest place in Islam...

     - 127 killed (excluding perpetrators)
  • August 2, 1980 : Bologna bombing - 85 killed
  • April 18, 1983 : 1983 United States embassy bombing
    1983 United States Embassy bombing
    The 1983 U.S. embassy bombing was a suicide bombing against the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on April 18, 1983 that killed over 60 people, mostly embassy staff members and United States Marines and sailors. It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission up to that time, and is...

     - 63 killed
  • October 23, 1983: Beirut barracks bombing
    1983 Beirut barracks bombing
    The Beirut Barracks Bombing occurred during the Lebanese Civil War, when two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing United States and French military forces—members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon—killing 299 American and French servicemen...

     - 299 killed
  • March 8, 1985 : Beirut car bombing
    1985 Beirut Car Bombing
    On 8 March 1985, a car bomb exploded between 9 and 45 metres from the house of Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, in a failed assassination attempt organized by the American CIA and British intelligence...

     - 80 killed
  • May 14, 1985 : Anuradhapura massacre
    Anuradhapura massacre
    The Anuradhapura massacre occurred in Sri Lanka in 1985 and was carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This was the largest massacre of Sinhalese civilians by the LTTE to date; it was also the first major operation carried out by the LTTE outside a Tamil majority area.-Incident:The...

     - 146 killed
  • June 23, 1985: Air India Flight 182
    Air India Flight 182
    Air India Flight 182 was an Air India flight operating on the Montreal–London–Delhi route. On 23 June 1985, the airplane operating on the route a Boeing 747-237B named after Emperor Kanishka was blown up by a bomb at an altitude of , and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean while in Irish airspace.A...

     bombing over the Atlantic Ocean
    Atlantic Ocean
    The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

     - 329 killed
  • December 21, 1988: Pan Am Flight 103
    Pan Am Flight 103
    Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport...

     bombing over Scotland
    Scotland
    Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

     - 270 killed
  • March 12, 1993: Bombay bombings - 257 killed
  • April 19, 1995: Oklahoma City bombing
    Oklahoma City bombing
    The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19...

     in the United States
    United States
    The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

     - 168 killed
  • August 7, 1998: U.S. embassy bombings
    1998 United States embassy bombings
    The 1998 United States embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the East African capitals of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. The date of the...

     in Kenya and Tanzania - 224 killed
  • September 11, 2001: September 11 attacks in the United States
    United States
    The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

     - 2,998 killed
  • October 12, 2002: Bali bombing
    2002 Bali bombing
    The 2002 Bali bombings occurred on 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The attack was claimed as the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia according to the current police general, killing 202 people,...

     in Indonesia
    Indonesia
    Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

     - 202 killed
  • March 2, 2004: Ashura massacre
    Ashura massacre
    The Ashura massacre of March 2, 2004 in Iraq was a series of planned terrorist explosions that killed at least 178 and injured at least 500 Iraqi Shi'a Muslims commemorating the Day of Ashura...

     in Iraq
    Iraq
    Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

     - 170 killed
  • March 11, 2004: Madrid train bombings in Spain
    Spain
    Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

     - 191 killed
  • September 4, 2004: Beslan school hostage crisis
    Beslan school hostage crisis
    The Beslan school hostage crisis of early September 2004 was a three-day hostage-taking of over 1,100 people which ended in the deaths of over 380...

     in Russia
    Russia
    Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

     - 344 killed
  • February 28, 2005: Al Hillah bombing
    2005 Al Hillah bombing
    The Al Hillah bombing killed 127 people, chiefly men lining up to join the Iraqi police forces, at the recruiting centre on February 28, 2005 in Al Hillah, Iraq....

     in Iraq - 127 killed
  • July 7, 2005: 7 July 2005 London bombings
    7 July 2005 London bombings
    The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....

     in the United Kingdom
    United Kingdom
    The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

     - 52 killed
  • July 11, 2006: Mumbai train bombings in India
    India
    India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

     - 207 killed
  • March 27, 2007: Tal Afar bombings and massacre
    2007 Tal Afar bombings and massacre
    The 2007 Tal Afar bombings took place on March 27, 2007, when two truck bombs targeted Shia areas of the town of Tal Afar, Iraq, killing 152 and wounding 347 people.-External links:*...

     in Iraq - 152 killed
  • August 14, 2007: Yazidi communities bombings
    2007 Yazidi communities bombings
    The 2007 Yazidi communities bombings occurred at around 8pm local time on August 14, 2007, when four co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks detonated in the Yazidi towns of Qahtaniya and Jazeera , near Mosul....

     in Iraq - 796 killed
  • November 26–28, 2008: 2008 Mumbai attacks
    2008 Mumbai attacks
    The 2008 Mumbai attacks were more than 10 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India's largest city, by Islamist attackers who came from Pakistan...

     in India
    India
    India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

     - 185 killed
  • July 22, 2011: 2011 Norway attacks
    2011 Norway attacks
    The 2011 Norway attacks were two sequential terrorist attacks against the government, the civilian population and a summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011....

     - 77 killed

See also

  • Crimes against humanity
  • Mass grave
    Mass grave
    A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...

  • School shooting
  • Suicide bomber
  • Terrorism
    Terrorism
    Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

  • War crime
    War crime
    War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...


External links

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