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RAF Chronology

DW staff (tkw)September 5, 2007

In its 28 years of existence, the left-wing militant Red Army Faction group murdered 34 people. Below is a chronology of the group's terrorist activities.

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RAF logo
The infamous star under which the RAF took 34 livesImage: dpa

June 5, 1970: A Berlin publication calls for the establishment of the Red Army Faction with the words "Let the armed resistance begin."

May 11, 1972: Bomb attack on US barracks in Frankfurt leaves one person dead and 13 injured.

May 12, 1972: Bomb attack on police station in Augsburg injures five police officers.

May 15, 1972: Bomb attack on the car of Federal Judge Wolfgang Buddenberg. His wife, who was driving the car, is injured.

May 19, 1972: Bomb attack on Axel Springer Publishing in Hamburg. Seventeen are wounded.

May 24, 1972: One bomb attack outside an officers club in Heidelberg followed moments later by a second blast in front of the Army Security Agency, US Army in Europe at Campbell Barracks. Three people are killed, five injured.

April 24, 1975: Occupation of the West German embassy in Stockholm. Four people are killed, two of them RAF members.

January 4, 1977: Attack against US 42nd Field Artillery Brigade at Giessen. Several RAF members are killed.

April 7, 1977: Assassination of Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback. The driver and another passenger are also killed.

July 30, 1977: The director of Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto, is shot in his home during an attempted kidnapping.

September 5, 1977: Chairman of the German Employers' Federation, Hanns Martin Schleyer, is kidnapped. Three police officers and the driver are killed during the kidnapping.

October 13, 1977: A Lufthansa aircraft is hijacked and 87 people taken hostage. The hijacking is ended by German commandos on October 18. 86 hostages are freed alive. The captain of the aircraft had already been killed. Three hijackers are killed.

October 18, 1977: Three RAF leaders, Baader, Ensslin and Raspe commit suicide in prison. Hanns Martin Schleyer is shot in response to the news of the suicides.

June 25, 1979: NATO's commander, Alexander Haig, escapes an assassination attempt in Mons, Belgium.

August 31, 1981: Large car bomb explodes in the parking lot of Ramstein air base in Germany.

September 15, 1981: Unsuccessful rocket attack against the car carrying US Army's West German Commander, Frederick Kroesen.

December 18, 1984: Unsuccessful attempt to bomb a school for NATO officers.

August 8, 1985: Car bomb in the parking lot across from the base commander's building at the Rhein-Main air base near Frankfurt. Two people are killed in the blast and a further man was kidnapped and killed the night before for his military ID card.

July 9, 1986: Siemens manager Karl Heinz Beckurts and his driver Eckhard Groppler are shot in Strasslach near Munich.

November 30, 1989: The head of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, is killed in a bomb blast in Bad Homburg. The case remains unsolved.

April 1, 1991: Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, head of the Treuhandanstalt is shot in his house in Düsseldorf

March 27, 1993: Bomb attacks at the construction site of a new prison. No injuries but much of the building is destroyed.

June 27, 1993: Shoot-out following the attacks on the prison site. One RAF member and one GSG-9 officer are killed.

April 20, 1998: The RAF officially disbands.