Target: Airport
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Airports have always been a favourite target of terrorists of almost all extreme ideological convictions.
On 8 June 2014, when a group of religious militants stormed the old terminal building of the Karachi Airport, hardly a mile away from the city's main Jinnah International Airport, this was the second major terrorist attack on an airport in Pakistan.
The first major attack in this respect took place on 15 December 2012 at Peshawar's Bacha Khan International Airport. Here too, the attackers who stormed the airport by firing rockets at the airport building were religious militants belonging to various extremist organizations operating in the mountains of Pakistan's lawless tribal areas.
Four civilians and five militants were killed in the commotion and at least forty others were wounded.
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| A rocket explodes near the Peshawar Airport (December 2012). |
Prominent Attacks on Airports:
Lod Airport Massacre (1972)
One of the first major attacks on an airport by armed terrorists was also perhaps one of the most brutal. It took place in May 1972 at Lod International Airport in Israel's largest city, Tel Aviv. The attack was carried out by the extreme left-wing Japanese terrorist group, the Japanese Red Army (JRA).
The JRA that was considered to be one of the most feared left-wing terrorist outfits at the time was hired by a militant leftist faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to undertake the attack on the Lod Airport.
The attack was planned in PFLP's headquarters in Lebanon and was carried out by three young Japanese militants who arrived at the Lod Airport from Rome. They were dressed like conservative Japanese businessmen and carried with them violin cases that were not checked at the airport in Rome.
The cases carried Chez-made assault rifles and hand grenades. The men also escaped detection when they arrived at the Lod Airport until they opened up their violin cases and began to fire indiscriminately at the security and airport personnel and at common passengers.
26 people were killed in the mayhem and 80 were injured. Two of the terrorists were eventually shot dead and one was arrested.
In 1978 the PFLP broke into various factions until these factions too were wiped by Western intelligence agencies in the 1980s.
The JRA peaked in the 1970s but action by Japanese authorities (in league with Western intelligence agencies) began to force the JRA to slowly wither away in the late 1980s until it was completely disbanded.
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| Blood and baggage: Lod Airport after the attack (May 1972). |
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| One of the apprehended terrorists. |
Ankara Airport attack (1982)
In August 1982 two men belonging to a militant Arminian nationalist organization managed to smuggle guns and homemade bombs into the main airport of the Turkish capital city, Ankara. They exploded the bombs near the check-in counter of the Dutch airline, the KLM, and then proceeded to kill airport and security staff in the area.
While shooting at the fleeing passengers, one of the terrorists shouted: 'Turkey has killed thousands of Arminians, what does it matter if 25 of you die?'
They then ran into a restaurant where they took over 20 people hostage. The Turkish security personnel stormed the place, killing one of the gunmen and arresting the other.
9 people were killed in the attack and over 70 were injured. The Turkish state then went about systematically eliminating the Arminian militant organization.
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| Officials carry away the body of one of the Arminian militants who was killed by the security forces. |
Rome and Vienna Airport Attacks (1985)
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| Abu Nidal: Palestinian nationalist-turned-militant-Marxist-turned-notorious-mercenary. Was assassinated by Iraqi secret police in 2002. |
In December 1985, a renegade militant outfit, the 'Abu Nidal Organization', which, in the 1970s had experienced a fall-out and split from Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), attempted to hijack two planes belonging to the Israeli national carrier from Rome and Vienna airports.
Four of Abu Nidal's men managed to make their way into Rome's international airport with guns and grenades. They proceeded to board an Israeli flight but inexplicably (and suddenly) began to shoot airport staff.
They shot dead 16 airport staff members and passengers and injured 99 others before their killing spree was halted by Italian security forces who killed three of the attackers and arrested the fourth.
Moments after the Rome airport attack, three more Abu Nidal men managed to sneak into Viana's international airport. They shot dead three men near a check-in counter of the Israeli national carrier, before running out of the airport building and escaping away in a car.
The Viana police cashed the attackers down and after a gun fight, killed two of the attackers and arrested one.
The Abu Nidal Organization gradually mutated from being a radical Marxist Palestinian group to becoming a band of hired mercenaries who, by the end of the Cold War in 1991, became isolated and went into hiding. Many were eliminated by Western intelligence agencies as well as by their former Arab benefactors in Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Abu Nidal was himself assassinated in Iraq in 2002.
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| Bodies lie bleeding in the aftermath of the attack at the airport in Rome. |
Los Angeles Airport Shooting
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| Police cordon-off the airport after the shooting. |
In July 2002 a lone gunmen standing at a check-in counter at the Los Angeles International Airport began to shoot down people who were standing with him. He shot dead two people before an unarmed guard knocked him down. The attacker whipped out a knife and stabbed the guard but the guard managed to snatch the gun away from him.
The attacker was an Egyptian who had migrated to the US in 1992. After his arrest he said that he was acting alone and his attack was a reaction against the United States' policy towards the Palestinians.
Colombo International Airport Attack (2001)
In July 2001, 14 heavily-armed members of the main Tamil militant organization, the LTTE, barged into a security base near the Columbo International Airport. Using machine-guns, grenades and rockets, they managed to damage a number of Sri Lankan Air Force planes parked at the sight.
Eight militants were shot dead by the security forces and three security personnel lost their lives. The remaining six militants then crossed over to the neighboring Columbo International Airport and began to attack passenger planes with bombs and rockets.
Air Force and military personnel finally managed to kill the remaining militants. Two aircrafts belonging to the Sri Lankan national carrier were almost completely destroyed.
A decade later the state and government finally managed to eliminate the LTTE and bring to a close the country's vicious Civil War between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE that lasted for almost two and a half decades.
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| One of the Tamil militants lies dead at the site of the attack. |
Related:
Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com. He is also the author of two books on the social history of Pakistan, End of the Past and The Pakistan Anti-Hero.
He tweets @NadeemfParacha
