Editing Assassination (section)

===As a tool of insurgents===
Insurgent groups have often employed assassination as a tool to further their causes. Assassinations provide several functions for such groups: the removal of specific enemies and as propaganda tools to focus the attention of media and politics on their cause.{{citation needed|date=October 2024}}

The [[Irish Republican Army (1917–22)|Irish Republican Army]] guerrillas in 1919 to 1921 killed many [[Royal Irish Constabulary]] Police intelligence officers during the [[Irish War of Independence]]. [[Michael Collins (Irish leader)|Michael Collins]] set up a special unit, [[The Squad (IRA unit)|the Squad]], for that purpose, which had the effect of intimidating many policemen into resigning from the force. The Squad's activities peaked with the killing of 14 British agents in [[Dublin]] on [[Bloody Sunday (1920)|Bloody Sunday]] in 1920.{{citation needed|date=October 2024}}

The tactic was used again by the [[Provisional IRA]] during [[the Troubles]] in Northern Ireland (1969–1998). Assassination of [[unionism in the United Kingdom|unionist]] politicians and activists was one of a number of methods used in the [[Provisional IRA campaign 1969–1997]]. The IRA also attempted to assassinate British Prime Minister [[Margaret Thatcher]] by [[Brighton hotel bombing|bombing the Conservative Party Conference]] in a [[Brighton]] hotel.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-10-12 |title=Brighton Grand Hotel: 'We immediately knew it was a bomb' |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62g443yq06o |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=www.bbc.com |language=en-GB}}</ref> [[Ulster loyalism|Loyalist paramilitaries]] retaliated by killing Catholics at random and assassinating [[Irish nationalist]] politicians.<ref>{{Cite web |title=What You Need to Know About The Troubles |url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-troubles |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=Imperial War Museums |language=en}}</ref>

[[Basque people|Basque]] separatists [[ETA (separatist group)|ETA]] in Spain assassinated many security and political figures since the late 1960s, notably the president of the [[Francoist]] government of Spain, [[Luis Carrero Blanco]], 1st Duke of Carrero-Blanco Grandee of Spain, in 1973. In the early 1990s, it also began to target academics, journalists and local politicians who publicly disagreed with it.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Historical Documents - Office of the Historian |url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve15p2Ed2/d196 |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=history.state.gov}}</ref>

The [[Red Brigades]] in Italy carried out assassinations of political figures and, to a lesser extent, so did the [[Red Army Faction]] in Germany in the 1970s and the 1980s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sundquist |first=Victor H. |date=2010 |title=Political Terrorism: An Historical Case Study of the Italian Red Brigades |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26463145 |journal=Journal of Strategic Security |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=53–68 |doi=10.5038/1944-0472.3.3.5 |jstor=26463145 |issn=1944-0464|doi-access=free }}</ref>

In the [[Vietnam War]], communist insurgents routinely assassinated government officials and individual civilians deemed to offend or rival the revolutionary movement. Such attacks, along with widespread military activity by insurgent bands, almost brought the [[Ngo Dinh Diem]] regime to collapse before the US intervened.<ref>Pike, Douglas (1970). ''Viet Cong'' (new edition). The MIT Press.</ref>