Terrorism Timeline

* Oct. 1983: A suicide car bomb attack on the headquarters of the U.S. military peacekeeping force in Lebanon kills 241 American personnel.

* March 1985: U.S. journalist Terry Anderson is kidnapped in Lebanon. He is released in December 1991.

* April 1985: A bomb explodes near a U.S. air base in Madrid, killing 18 Spaniards; 82 are hurt, including 15 Americans.

* June 1985: Four U.S. Marines and two American businessmen are among 13 people killed in a machine-gun attack on a cafe in San Salvador.

* June 1985: Hijackers seize a TWA jet en route from Athens to Lebanon. A U.S. serviceman is killed.

* Aug. 1985: A car bomb kills two people and injures 20 at a U.S. base in Frankfurt, Germany. A U.S. soldier is found slain a day after the blast.

* Oct. 1985: Palestinians hijack the cruise liner Achille Lauro, killing Leon Klinghoffer and throwing the wheelchair-bound New Yorker overboard.

* Nov. 1985: Hijackers of an Egyptian airliner kill an American passenger. Egyptian commandos storm the plane in Malta; 60 people die.

* Dec. 1985: An Arab suicide hit squad attacks U.S. and Israeli check-in desks at the airports in Rome and Vienna simultaneously; 20 die, including four guerrillas.

* April 1986: An explosion aboard a TWA plane making its descent toward Athens airport kills four passengers. Days later, a bomb blast in a West Berlin discotheque frequented by Americans kills an American and a German; 150 others are hurt, 44 of them Americans. The attacks follow U.S.-Libya hostilities off the Libyan coast in March.

* Sept. 1986: University administrator Joseph Cicippio is taken hostage in Lebanon. He is released in 1991.

* Jan. 1987: American professors Robert Polhill, Alann Steen and Jesse Turner are kidnapped in Lebanon. Polhill is released in 1990, Steen and Turner in 1991.

* June 1987: U.S. journalist Charles Glass is kidnapped in Lebanon. The L.A. native escaped in August 1997.

* June 1988: A car bomb kills the U.S. defense attache near his home in Athens.

* Dec. 1988: A bomb explodes aboard a Pan Am airliner. The crash in Lockerbie, Scotland, kills 259 people aboard and 11 others on the ground.

* Feb. 1989: A bus carrying U.S. military personnel near Comayagua, Honduras, is hit by a bomb blast. Five people are hurt.

* July 1989: A bomb outside a discotheque in La Ceiba, Honduras, wounds seven U.S. soldiers.

* Feb. 1993: Six people are killed and more than 1,000 injured when a bomb explodes at the World Trade Center in New York.

* April 1995: A car bomb destroys the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Two people are convicted.

* June 1996: A fuel truck bomb kills 19 American personnel and wounds nearly 400 people at a U.S. military complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

* July 1996: A bomb explodes at the Atlanta Olympic Games, killing two and wounding 110.

* Jan. 1997: Letter bombs with Alexandria, Egypt, postmarks are discovered at Al Hayat newspaper bureaus. Three similar devices, also postmarked in Egypt, are found at a prison in Leavenworth, Kan.

* Feb. 1997: A Palestinian gunman opens fire atop the Empire State Building in New York, killing a Danish national and wounding U.S. and foreign visitors before turning the gun on himself.

* Aug. 1998: Car bombs explode within five minutes of each other outside the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. At least 147 people are killed, including at least 11 Americans.

Sources: Reuters; “Patterns of Global Terrorism”

Compiled by JACQUELYN CENACVEIRA / Los Angeles Times