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Hamas attacks Israel -

On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a devasting cross-border attack on Israel. This unprovoked aggression towards mostly civilian targets resulted in numerous casualties on both sides and provoked the Israel-Hamas War, which threatens to escalate into a wider conflict.

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Missile strike on Al-Ahli hospital -

The missile strike on Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City on October 17, 2023, during the Israel-Hamas War, killed at least 400 Palestinians.

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The Holocaust -

The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Europe's Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. The six million men, women, and children who perished under this state-sponsored terror also included Roma and Sinti, and others killed for their ethnicity, religion, politics, and sexual orientation.

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Nanjing massacre -

The horrific series of events that began in December 1937 and lasted six weeks, known as the Nanjing massacre, was the mass killing and ravaging of Chinese citizens and capitulated (surrendering) soldiers by troops of the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

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My Lai massacre -

One of the darkest episodes in US military history took place on March 16, 1968, when American combatants entered the Vietnamese village of My Lai and massacred anywhere between 347 and 504 civilians. Lieutenant William Calley (pictured) was the only person convicted of the crime.

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Rwandan genocide -

The Rwandan genocide in 1994 was 100 days of slaughter that saw one million members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group murdered by armed Hutu militia. The United Nations described the carnage as one of the most notorious modern genocides. Pictured is the memorial for victims in Kigali, Rwanda.

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Armenian genocide -

In April 1915, the Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its civilian Armenian population. There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide. Pictured are Armenian refugee children.

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Unit 731 -

Unit 731 was a secret Japanese biological and chemical warfare research and development project that carried out human medical experiments during the 1930s and 1940s. It killed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people in what constituted some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War.

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The killing fields -

During the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, an estimated two million people lost their lives, many killed in rural locations that became known as the killing fields.

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Siege of Leningrad -

On September 8, 1941, German forces closed in around the Soviet city of Leningrad. The siege lasted 872 days, after which up to two million lives had been lost. Pictured are Leningrad citizens helping to strengthen the city's defenses.

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Srebrenica massacre -

The systematic slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica by units of the Bosnian Serb Army during the Bosnian War (1992–1995) was one of the worst episode of mass murder within Europe since Second World War. 

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Chemical attacks during the First World War -

Sixteen million people were killed in the First World War. Of those, nine million were combatants and seven million were noncombatants. The conflict witnessed the first use of chemical weapons in warfare when the Germans released clouds of poisonous chlorine during a gas attack at Ypres in April 1915.

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Atomic bombing of Hiroshima -

A defining moment in world history, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians.

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Atomic bombing of Nagasaki -

Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb was dropped over Nagasaki, effectively bringing to an end the Second World War and ushering in the nuclear age.

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Aktion T4 -

Aktion T4 was the despicable campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany, which began during the late 1930s and continued to the end of the Second World War. Karl Brandt (pictured), Adolf Hitler's personal physician, led the murderous operation. He was executed as a war criminal in June 1948.

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Oradour-sur-Glane massacre -

On June 10, 1944, troops of the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division massacred 642 people and destroyed the town of Oradour-sur-Glane in France as collective punishment for the kidnapping and subsequent execution of a Waffen SS officer. The ruins of the town stand today as a reminder of the atrocity.

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Bombing of Guernica -

The indiscriminate bombing of the Basque city of Guernica on April 16, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, likely killed up to a 1,000 civilians. The event is the subject of the famous anti-war painting 'Guernica' by Pablo Picasso.

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Andersonville Prison -

Andersonville Prison, officially known as Camp Sumter, was a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp established towards the end of the American Civil War. Arguably the most horrific Confederate prison for Union soldiers, Andersonville held up to 45,000 prisoners during the conflict, of which 13,000 died in appalling conditions.

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Bloody Gulch massacre -

The Bloody Gulch massacre, which took place on August 12, 1950, in the early months of the Korean War, was  a war crime perpetrated by North Korea's Korean People's Army against 75 US Army prisoners of war.

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The Second Congo War -

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has for decades been one of the world's most notorious trouble spots. In 1998, the Second Congo War began, sparked when the DRC accused Rwanda of firing rockets at a school in Biruma, which killed two children. Eventually nine countries ended up fighting each other on Congolese soil.

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Construction of the Burma railway -

Levels of Japanese cruelty towards British and American POWs reached new heights of barbarity during the forced construction by captured Allied troops of the infamous Burma railway. Their suffering was immortalized in the 1957 war film 'The Bridge on the River Kwai.'

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Wounded Knee massacre -

The slaughter of up to 300 Lakota Indians by United States Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota on December 29, 1890, stands as one of the most shameful acts of mass murder of an indigenous people in the history of the United States.

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Siege of Mariupol -

The siege of Mariupol by Russian forces in 2022 resulted in a maternity hospital and a theater being bombed, among many other buildings. The Russians also surrounded the city's Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in a standoff that helped define Ukraine's resolve to rid itself of its invading aggressor.

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Omagh bombing -

On August 15, 1998, a car bomb exploded in the town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Planted by members of the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA), the blast killed 29 people. It was the deadliest attack to have occurred during the three-decades-long civil conflict known as the Troubles.

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The fall of Mazar-i-Sharif -

On August 8, 1998, after taking the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters committed a massacre against its Shia population.

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Myanmar conflict -

The NGO Myanmar Witness identified 16 separate attacks on medical infrastructure and staff in just three months at the start of 2023. The UK's Sky News later verified reports of Myanmar military junta "deliberately bombing medical facilities."

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Wiriyamu massacre -

The Wiriyamu massacre was a massacre of the civilian population of the village of Wiriyamu in Mozambique by Portuguese soldiers in December 1972 during the Portuguese Colonial Wars. Pictured are Portuguese soldiers presenting arms for an inspection at Ancuabe in Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambique, in July 1973.

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Sabra and Shatila massacre -

The Sabra and Shatila massacre is remembered as one of the most traumatic events in Palestinian history. It took place on September 16-18, 1982, in Beirut when Christian militiamen massacred Palestinian refugees under the noses of the surrounding Israel Defense Force. Between between 800 and 2,000 Palestinians were killed. 

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Execution of King Charles I -

The execution of King Charles I on January 30, 1649, towards the end of the English Civil War, put paid to the idea of an all-powerful and unquestionable monarch. The English Civil War actually refers to a series of civil wars and political machinations between Royalists and Parliamentarians in England from 1642 to 1651. An estimated 200,000 English soldiers and civilians were killed during three civil wars.

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Charge of the Light Brigade -

A misunderstood order relayed by a British commander to his forces on October 25, 1854, during the Crimean War, led to one of the most infamous blunders in military history. British light cavalry mounted a charge towards Russian lines, a mistake that led to the deaths of over 100 soldiers.

Sources: (The Guardian) (American Experience) (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) (National Geographic) (Human Rights Watch) (Myanmar Witness) (Sky News) (British Library)

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