This is a list of notable hostage crises by date.
1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1991st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 991st year of the 2nd millennium, the 91st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1990s decade.
The Japanese Red Army was a militant communist organization active from 1971 to 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization by Japan and the United States. The JRA was founded by Fusako Shigenobu and Tsuyoshi Okudaira in February 1971, and was most active in the 1970s and 1980s, operating mostly out of Lebanon with PFLP collaboration and funding from Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, as well as Syria and North Korea.
The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy on Prince's Gate in South Kensington, London. The gunmen, Iranian Arabs campaigning for sovereignty of Khuzestan Province, took 26 people hostage, including embassy staff, several visitors, and a police officer who had been guarding the embassy. They demanded the release of prisoners in Khuzestan and their own safe passage out of the United Kingdom. The British government quickly decided that safe passage would not be granted and a siege ensued. Subsequently, police negotiators secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions, such as the broadcasting of the hostage-takers' demands on British television.
The Beslan school siege was a terrorist attack that started on 1 September 2004, lasted three days, involved the imprisonment of more than 1,100 people as hostages and ended with the deaths of 334 people, 186 of them children, as well as 31 of the attackers. It is considered the deadliest school shooting in history.
The Platte Canyon High School hostage crisis was a hostage taking and shooting at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, on September 27, 2006. The gunman, 53-year-old Duane Roger Morrison, took seven female students hostage and sexually assaulted them, later releasing four. When police broke open the classroom's door with explosives, Morrison opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol before shooting hostage Emily Keyes in the head. The other remaining hostages escaped unharmed, and paramedics confirmed that Morrison had committed suicide shortly before police were able to enter the classroom. Keyes was pronounced dead at 4:32 p.m. MDT at Saint Anthony's Hospital in Denver, Colorado after undergoing emergency surgery.
From 2 April to 10 May 2002, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the West Bank was besieged by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), targeting suspected Palestinian militants who had taken shelter in the church.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been accused by several countries of training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for non-state militant actors, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and other Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Jihad (IJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These groups are designated terrorist groups by a number of countries and international bodies such as the EU, UN, and NATO; however, Iran considers such groups to be "national liberation movements" with a right to self-defense against Israeli military occupation. These proxies are used by Iran across the Middle East and Europe to foment instability, expand the scope of the Islamic Revolution, and carry out terrorist attacks against Western targets in the regions. Its special operations unit, the Quds Force, is known to provide arms, training, and financial support to militias and political movements across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen.
The history of the Jews in Uganda is connected to some local tribes who have converted to Judaism, such as the Abayudaya, down to the twentieth century when Uganda under British control was offered to the Jews of the world as a "Jewish homeland" under the British Uganda Programme known as the "Uganda Plan" and culminating with the troubled relationship between Ugandan leader Idi Amin with Israel that ended with Operation Entebbe known as the "Entebbe Rescue" or "Entebbe Raid" of 1976.
The 2011 Muar kindergarten hostage crisis took place at the Serikids Kindergarten in Muar, Johor, Malaysia on 7 July 2011. About 30 preschool children aged between 2 and 6 years old and four teachers of the kindergarten in Sungai Abong were held hostages starting at 9:15 a.m. Malaysian time (UTC+8), by Lau Hui Chung, also known as Loi Hui Chung and Ah Teong, aged 40, who had barged into the double-storey building wielding a machete and hammer, and was suspected to be mentally deranged and a drug addict. The siege began when police arrived at 10:00 a.m. after receiving a tip-off. He threatened to kill the hostages if his demand to negotiate with the Prime Minister and be given a gun was not met. He was reported to be emotional and suicidal at times.
On the evening of 18 November 1997, South African military attaché McGill Alexander and his family were taken hostage for approximately twenty-one hours by wanted fugitive Chen Chin-hsing in their home in Taipei, Taiwan. Chen forcibly entered the Alexanders' home at approximately 7:00 pm that evening. Chen was captured the following day and executed roughly two years later.
The February 1999 Kurdish protests were held by Kurds in Turkey, Iran and by the Kurdish diaspora worldwide, after Kurdistan Workers' Party leader Abdullah Öcalan had been captured at the Nairobi airport in Kenya, after having left the Greek embassy, and was brought to Turkey to stand trial for terrorism promoting separatism and treason.
On 21 September 2013, four masked gunmen attacked the Westgate shopping mall, an upmarket mall in Nairobi, Kenya. There are conflicting reports about the number killed in the attack, since part of the mall collapsed due to a fire that started during the siege. The attack resulted in 71 total deaths, including 62 civilians, five Kenyan soldiers, and all four gunmen. Approximately 200 people were wounded in the massacre.
The Balcombe Street siege was an incident involving members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and London's Metropolitan Police lasting from 6 to 12 December 1975. The siege ended with the surrender of the four IRA members and the release of their two hostages. The events were televised and watched by millions.
The Lindt Café siege was a terrorist attack that occurred on 15–16 December 2014 when a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt Chocolate Café in the APA Building in Martin Place, Sydney, Australia.
On 9 January 2015, Amedy Coulibaly, armed with a submachine gun, an assault rifle, and two Tokarev pistols, entered and attacked a Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes in Paris, France. There, Coulibaly murdered four Jewish hostages and held fifteen other hostages during a siege in which he demanded that the Kouachi brothers not be harmed. The siege ended when police stormed the supermarket, killing Coulibaly. The attack and hostage crisis occurred in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shooting two days earlier, and concurrently with the Dammartin-en-Goële hostage crisis in which the two Charlie Hebdo gunmen were cornered.
On 5 June 2017, Yacqub Khayre, a 29-year-old Somali-born Australian, murdered a receptionist and held a sex worker hostage at the Buckingham International Serviced Apartments, located in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. In a subsequent shoot-out with a police tactical unit, Khayre was killed and three police officers were wounded. Police consider the siege an act of terrorism.
Events of the year 2023 in Israel.
The Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis was a 2022 incident where a 44-year-old British Pakistani, armed with a pistol, took four people hostage in a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, in the United States.
Events in the year 2022 in Lebanon.
1975 Fox Street siege occurred at the Israeli consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa in April 1975. Two assistant security officials working at the consulate, David and Charles Protter, Jewish South Africans took control of the consulate personnel as they arrived for work on Monday morning, 28 April. Twenty-one hostages were eventually taken. David Protter had convinced his brother Charles that he was conducting a test of security at the consulate. The head of security was killed soon after he arrived. By late morning, police in Johannesburg became aware of suspicious activity at the consulate but not until gunfire from the consulate started striking pedestrians in the street after midday, confirmed suspicions that the consulate had been seized. Negotiations continued throughout the day and into the early morning of 29 April before all hostages were released and David Protter surrendered and was taken into custody. A total of 4 people, 2 hostages and 2 bystanders, died during the siege.