'Soft Targets' Off Limits No More

In Iraq, they've sawn off civilians' heads in grisly executions aired on the Internet. In Israel, they've blown themselves up inside packed buses. Now, in Russia, they've turned a school into a slaughterhouse.

Extremists have become chillingly brazen in singling out so-called "soft targets" — and counterterrorism experts say they fear nothing is off-limits anymore to those intent on achieving maximum punch and publicity for their cause.

This week's school seizure in southern Russia, which culminated Friday in a commando raid and mass civilian casualties that included children, shattered whatever might have remained of the notion that innocents are taboo as targets.

"They're crossing thresholds — no question about it," said Jonathan Stevenson, a terrorism expert with the Washington office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The raising of the bar is a result of the need to draw attention of a global audience that is increasingly difficult to shock, the growing sophistication of the militants as a result of experience, and cooperation between terrorist groups whose causes and cultures may otherwise have little in common.

Militants "are becoming much more educated in terms of what will have an effect," said Sandra Bell, director of homeland security at the Royal United Services Center, a London think tank.

Extremists in Russia's breakaway Chechnya region increasingly have adopted the tactics of al Qaeda and other Middle Eastern terrorism groups, contends Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based counterterrorism expert. "They have blown up mosques, attacked transportation infrastructure, destroyed planes and now conducted a mass hostage-taking," he said.

"These groups are copycats and imitative, not innovative ... In terms of scale, this is unprecedented and follows the category of spectacular and theatrical attacks akin to al Qaeda."

Experts tracking terrorist cells say the trend toward soft targets is undeniable — and probably unstoppable.

In the late 1960s, Palestinian hijackers pioneered the seizing of airliners — although, unlike many of today's terrorists, they usually sought to survive the situation and demanded the planes be flown to safe havens.

In the 1970s, the Irish Republican Army pioneered the use of car bombs in Britain and Northern Ireland — although the group usually tried to avoid great civilian casualties.

A decade later, pro-Iranian Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant groups used kidnappings to maximum effect, holding dozens of foreigners in captivity for years.

In the '90s, embassies, government buildings and crowded subways became the targets of choice. Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people; three years later, al Qaeda bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 231.

Algerian Islamic extremists planted bombs that terrorized Paris subway commuters in 1995, killing eight people and wounding more than 200 others. That same year, a Japanese doomsday cult killed 12 people and injured thousands in a nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subways.

But it was Palestinian extremists who first made widespread use of the suicide strategy — exploiting the terrifying advantage wielded by anyone who is perceived as not only willing but eager to die. Over the past decade human beings who turned themselves into walking bombs have devastated the region's peace process, and have killed many hundreds of Israelis, turning every cafe outing or bus ride into a high-stakes gamble.

In June 2001 a suicide bomber blew up in a crowd of teenagers outside a seaside disco in Tel Aviv, killing 21 and crossing something of a threshold. In April 2002 a suicide bomber killed 29 people who had gathered for the traditional Passover eve feast — attaining yet another level of horror.

In the latest twist, Islamic radicals have begun beheading some of their kidnap victims, and video of some of the incidents have found their way onto the Internet. The gruesome tactic has spread fear and revulsion greater, perhaps, than what could be achieved by killing greater numbers of innocents in less extraordinary ways — and has brought pressure on some governments to pull troops or workers out of Iraq.

One explanation for the trend to ever more cruelty and shock value is that tactics that triggered international outrage just 20 years ago — such as the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian militants who killed a wheelchair-bound American tourist and tossed his body overboard — might seem relatively tame to a world stunned by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"Militants are now trying to damage their enemies any way they can, to search for soft targets such as schools and underground stations," said Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on Islamic extremism.

But the strategy can backfire.

After IRA terrorists came under scathing Catholic condemnation for civilian carnage, they focused mainly on bombs detonated with advance warning that inflicted huge economic damage on London's financial district while killing fewer bystanders.

Most groups that employ terrorist have insisted that they would not purposely target schoolchildren — a threshhold now spectacularly crossed by the hostage-takers in Russia, a group that reportedly included Arabs, Chechens and others.

Palestinian militant groups are unlikely to follow that lead because it could detract from their aim to be seen as "resistance fighters, not terrorists," Rashwan said.

The Quran admonishes the followers of Islam that not even the children of infidels should be killed. The Palestinian militant group Hamas contends its policy is not to target children, although it justifies attacks on civilians to avenge Israeli army attacks on ordinary citizens.

"We are freedom fighters, not gangs," a senior Hamas official in Gaza told the AP. "Women and children are not a target for Hamas. They have never been a target and they will never be our main target despite the daily killing of our women and children by Israel in cold blood."

Abu Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank, said the group was "shocked by what we see on television" about the Russian school standoff.

"We would never agree to such a thing," he said. "We never did such a thing and never would. When there is an explosion and children are killed, we are sorry for this because this was a mistake, not on purpose."