Sicarii

Sicarii (Latin plural form of Sicarius "dagger-man"; in Modern Hebrew rendered siqari'im סיקריים) is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, to an extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots, who fought the Roman occupation of Judea in an attempt to expel the Romans and their partisans from the area. The Sicarii carried sicae, or small daggers, concealed in their cloaks, hence their name. At public gatherings, they pulled out these daggers to attack Romans or Roman sympathizers, blending into the crowd after the deed to escape detection. They were one of the earliest forms of an organized assassination unit or cloak and daggers, predating the Middle Eastern assassins and Japanese ninjas by centuries.