Tactics of terrorism
Suicide terrorism is the most aggressive form of terrorism, pursuing coercion even at the expense of losing support among terrorists' own community. What distinguishes a suicide terrorist is that the attacker does not expect to survive a mission and often employs a method of attack that requires the attacker's death in order to succeed (such as planting a car bomb, wearing a suicide vest, or ramming an airplane into a building). In essence, a suicide terrorist kills others at the same time that he kills himself. Usually these tactics are used for a demonstrative purposes or to targeted assassinations. In most cases though, they target to kill a large number of people. Thus, while coercion is an element in all terrorism, coercion is the paramount objective of suicide terrorism.
Definitions of terrorism
The European Union defines terrorism for legal/official purposes in Art. 1 of the "Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism" (2002). This provides that terrorist offences are certain criminal offences set out in a list consisting largely of serious offences against persons and property that;
NATO defines terrorism in the AAP-06 NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions, Edition 2014 as "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against individuals or property in an attempt to coerce or intimidate governments or societies to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives".