World War II: Operation Carthage: Royal Air Force planes bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also accidentally hit a school, killing 125 civilians.
Operation Carthage, on 21 March 1945, was a British air raid on Copenhagen, Denmark during the Second World War which killed 145 civilians. The target of the raid was the Shellhus, the Gestapo headquarters in the city centre. It was used for the storage of dossiers and the torture of Danish citizens during interrogations. The Danish Resistance had long asked the British to conduct a raid against the site. The building was destroyed, 18 prisoners were freed and Nazi anti-resistance activities were disrupted. Part of the raid was mistakenly directed against a nearby school; the raid caused 125 civilian deaths (including 86 schoolchildren and 18 adults at the school). The Aarhus Air Raid was a similar attack against the Gestapo headquarters in Aarhus on 31 October 1944, which succeeded.