Former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro is abducted and assassinated by the terrorist Red Brigades

Sandinista guerrillas make a surprise attack on the National Palace in Nicaragua, taking more than 1000 people hostage

Lord Mountbatten is killed by an IRA bomb that explodes on his boat in the bay of Donegal

Saddam Hussein begins a reign of terror in Iraq, reading out at a meeting the names of fellow Ba'athists who are to be taken out and shot

Supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini seize the US embassy in Tehran, taking hostage 66 US citizens

Archbishop Oscar Romero, an exponent of liberation theology, is killed as he celebrates Mass in San Salvador

President Reagan is shot outside a hotel in Washington by John W. Hinckley Jr, but survives

A Turkish assailant in St Peter's Square in Rome shoots and seriously wounds John Paul II

Muslim terrorists assassinate Anwar el-Sadat, in response to his peace agreement with Israel

Hezbollah emerges in Lebanon as an Iranian-sponsored resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of the southern part of the country

Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino is assassinated at Manila International Airport

Sikh rebels, demanding an independent Punjab, seize the Golden Temple in Amritsar

The CIA covertly arranges for mines to be laid in Nicaragua's harbours

Indira Gandhi is assassinated in Delhi by members of her Sikh bodyguard, in retaliation for the desecration of the Golden Temple

French agents blow up Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour

Swedish prime minister Olof Palme is killed in a Stockholm street in an unsolved murder

Hamas (acronym in Arabic for 'Movement for Islamic Resistance') is founded in the occupied territories to lead armed resistance against Israel

Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, declares that the organization renounces 'terrorism in all its forms'

Osama bin Laden's involvement in the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan leads to his development of al-Qaeda

A terrorist bomb brings down flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland

Expelled from his own country, Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden moves to Sudan where he continues to develop al-Qaeda

Rajiv Gandhi is killed near Chennai, during an election campaign, by a suicide bomber on behalf of Tamil militants

Hutu youth militias, known as the Interahamwe, are formed in Rwanda to spearhead attacks on Tutsis

Melchior Ndadaye, the first Hutu president of Burundi, is killed by Tutsis within months of his election

The Hutu government in Rwanda preaches genocide against Tutsis