From schoolchildren to buses, extremists increasingly aim at 'soft targets'

By WILLIAM J. KOLE
The Associated Press

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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, publicity and paranoia.

This week's bloody school standoff in southern Russia, which culminated Friday in a commando raid and scores of civilian casualties that included children, shattered whatever might have remained of the notion that innocents are taboo terror victims.

"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.

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 Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and other Middle Eastern terrorism groups, said Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based counterterrorism expert. Soft targets such as hospitals, theaters and concerts, have been a Chechen hallmark since the start of the conflict a decade ago.

"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-Qaida."

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

In the 1970s, the Irish Republican Army pioneered the use of car bombs in Britain and Northern Ireland. 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 1990s, embassies, government buildings and crowded subways became targets.
 
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.

Terry Nichols conspired with bomber Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people. Three years later, al-Qaida bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 231.

Then came the spectacular Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed more than 2,700 people in hijacked-plane strikes against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Israel has been bloodied by scores of such attacks mounted by Palestinian suicide bombers, including a 2001 attack at a seaside disco in Tel Aviv that killed 21, mostly teenagers, and restaurant bombings that killed 29 in Netanya in 2002 and 19 in Haifa last year.

One explanation for the shift 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 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.

Palestinian militant groups are unlikely to follow the Russian militants' lead and take schoolchildren hostage 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.

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."

AP writers Beth Gardiner in London, Paul Garwood in Cairo and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City contributed to this story.