On September 5, 1972, eight members of the Palestinian group Black September entered the Olympic village in Munich, killed two Israeli athletes and took nine more hostage. All nine hostages, five of their captors and a West German police officer were dead by the end of the following day.
The attackers wanted the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and in German jails. Negotiations ran through the day, and the group and its hostages were flown by helicopter to Furstenfeldbruck air base, where German police had set up an ambush that fell apart almost immediately, because there were fewer snipers than the plan assumed, the floodlights did not cover the whole field, and a grenade was thrown into a helicopter once shooting began.
The Games were suspended for a day. A memorial service was held in the Olympic stadium, and the International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage declared that the Games must go on. Most athletes left anyway. The ambush failed.
The aftermath ran for years. Israel launched a campaign to kill those it held responsible, and Mossad agents killed an innocent waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1973, mistaking him for one of them. Germany set up the GSG 9 counter-terrorism unit within months, and the attack is the reason Olympic villages now have security arrangements that look like an airport's.