In the early hours, eight members of Black September broke into apartments housing the Israeli Olympic team, killing two immediately and taking nine hostage. A botched rescue attempt at Fürstenfeldbruck airfield that night left all nine hostages, five attackers, and a German policeman dead. The attack forced a reckoning over Olympic security and triggered Israel's covert Operation Wrath of God.
The attackers scaled a chain-link fence into the Olympic Village around 4:30 a.m., using gym bags to smuggle in Kalashnikovs and grenades. They burst into two apartments on Connollystrasse, killing wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yossef Romano within the first hour, then held nine more athletes hostage while demanding the release of over 200 Palestinian prisoners.
West German authorities negotiated through the day as television cameras broadcast the siege live to nearly a billion viewers worldwide, a first for terrorism. That evening, buses and helicopters transported the hostages and captors to Fürstenfeldbruck airfield under the pretense of a flight to Cairo, where police snipers, poorly briefed and vastly outnumbered, opened fire in the dark.
The firefight and a grenade thrown into a helicopter killed all nine remaining hostages. Only three of the eight attackers survived, and West Germany released them weeks later after a hijacking, prompting Israel to launch a decades-long campaign of assassinations against those responsible. The Games, controversially, resumed after a one-day pause.
Key people: Moshe Weinberg, Golda Meir, Issa