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The bloody trail of terrorism
Acts of terror are as old as history itself. But the modern face of terrorism dates back only about a generation. What were some of the major attacks on U.S. targets and citizens by terrorists with Middle Eastern ties?
A car bomb destroys the front wing of the 7-story U.S. Embassy building in Beirut. Sixty-three people are killed, including 17 Americans; more than 100 are injured. The extremist pro-Iranian group Islamic Jihad claims responsibility, but the militant Muslim organization Hezbollah, the Lebanese Party of God, is also identified. The Party of God leader, Imad Mughniyah, barely eludes capture by the FBI in 1995. He is now based primarily in Iran.
Oct. 23, 1983: U.S. Marine barracks, Beirut
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A truck loaded with explosives crashes into a U.S. Marine barracks near Beirut and kills 241 military personnel, most of them as they sleep. For the Marines, who are stationed there as part of a multinational peacekeeping force, it is the greatest loss of life in a single day since the invasion of Iwo Jima. U.S. officials blame Hezbollah. Four months later, the Marine contingent is withdrawn.
June 14, 1985: TWA flight 847, Beirut
Shiite Muslim gunmen seize TWA flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome and force it to land in Beirut. An American Marine, Robert Stethem, is shot, and his body is dumped onto the airport tarmac. The ordeal lasts more than two weeks, until Syrian mediation secures the release of the passengers. Charges are brought against four people. One of them, Mohammed Ali Hamadi, is arrested by Germany in 1987 and eventually sentenced to life in prison.
Oct. 8, 1985: ‘Achille Lauro,’ Egypt
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The Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked by four members of the Palestine Liberation Front off the coast of Egypt. One American, a disabled 69-year-old named Leon Klinghoffer, is killed and dumped overboard. The hijacking comes several days after an attack by Israeli warplanes on the Tunis headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The hijackers are convicted by an Italian court. The mastermind, Abul Abbas, remains at large; he has recently given interviews to journalists.
April 5, 1986: Discotheque, Berlin
A bomb at the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin kills two U.S. soldiers and injures 230 others, among them 44 Americans. Following the bombing, President Reagan orders retaliatory air strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi, in Libya. Eleven years after the incident, five suspects go on trial, including three employees of Libya’s former embassy in East Germany. One of them, Palestinian-born Ali Chanaa, says the blast “was a present” to the United States from Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. The trial is in progress.
Dec. 21, 1988: TWA flight 103, Lockerbie
Pan Am flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland, while en route from London to New York, killing 270 people, including 11 on the ground. In January 2001, one of two suspects, a high-ranking Libyan intelligence agent named Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi, is sentenced to life imprisonment for planting the bomb that brought down the plane. The judges stop short of describing the act as state-sponsored terrorism but say that all elements of the plot are “of Libyan origin.”
Feb. 26, 1993: World Trade Center, New York
Six people are killed and more than 1,000 injured when 1,100 pounds of explosives packed inside a minibus are detonated in the parking area under the World Trade Center in New York City. The explosion leaves a crater 100 feet wide and five stories deep, knocks out power to all seven buildings of the complex, and causes $300 million worth of damage. In 1995, 10 Muslim militants, including the blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, are convicted of conspiracy and other bombing-related charges. The master planner, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, is convicted in 1998 and sentenced to life plus 240 years in prison.
June 25, 1996: U.S. military housing, Saudi Arabia
A truck bomb explodes outside the Khobar Towers, a U.S. military housing complex, at the King Abdul Aziz air base near Dhahran, Saudi Arabi. In addition to 19 dead, more than 370 Americans and Saudis are wounded. In June 2001, more than a dozen Saudi and Lebanese members of Hezbollah are indicted for the attack, which federal officials say received support from individuals within the Iranian government. An unspecified number of the suspects are said to be in custody.
Aug. 7, 1998: U.S. embassies, Kenya and Tanzania
Within minutes of each other, two car bombs explode outside the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The death toll is 224, with some 5,500 wounded. Seventeen people are indicted and nine are captured. One of them, former U.S. Army sergeant Ali Mohamed, pleads guilty to conspiring with the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden to “attack any Western target in the Middle East.”
Oct. 12, 2000: ‘U.S.S. Cole,’ Yemen
A small vessel explodes as it approaches the naval destroyer U.S.S. Cole, which is refueling at the harbor of Aden in Yemen. The blast tears a 40 foot by 40 foot hole in the hull, killing 17 and wounding 39. Yemen soon arrests six suspects and announces that it will not extradite them to the U.S. The decision frustrates U.S. efforts to link the bombing conclusively to Osama bin Laden. Yemen says the case will be closed when the six are put on trial.
