But minutes after the meeting, Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, said, "Prime Minister Sharon received the word that it was, indeed, a suicide bombing" with "large-scale casualties."

Although killing German civilians was never an explicit policy, it was obvious that area bombing must lead to large-scale civilian casualties.

Its argument is that air strikes may weaken the Yugoslav military to the point where a land attack can be carried out successfully without large-scale allied casualties, a situation they have called a "semi-permissive environment."

Procedure for possible large-scale casualties.

Even Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, learned not to rely on attacks that blatantly conflict with international standards of behavior by causing large-scale civilian casualties.

Careful searching by NATO investigators found no evidence of any such large-scale casualties.

Though damage to each building was incurred, the attacks did not result in large-scale casualties, and was the last significant attack of the insurgency.

One constraint on American strategic thinking that has not changed much is an emphasis on avoiding large-scale casualties.

This resulted in large-scale civilian casualties and created a condition of humanitarian crisis.

As violence built towards a climax expected this weekend, Nato commanders faced a a dilemma over how to end the fighting without suffering large-scale casualties and causing rifts within Nato ranks.