(Redirected from 1998 U.S. embassy bombings)
Aftermath at the Nairobi embassy.
In the '1998 U.S. Embassy bombings' (
August 7,
1998), hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous
car bomb explosions at the
United States embassies in the
East African capital cities of
Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania and
Nairobi,
Kenya. The attacks, linked to local members of the
al Qaeda terrorist network headed by
Osama bin Laden, brought bin Laden and al Qaeda to international attention for the first time, and resulted in the U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its
Ten Most Wanted list.
Along with the
1993 World Trade Center bombing, the
1996 Khobar Towers bombing in
Saudi Arabia, and the
2000 attack on the ''
USS Cole'' in
Yemen, the Embassy Bombing is one of the major anti-American terrorist attacks that preceded the
September 11, 2001 attacks.
Attacks and casualties
Car bombs in vehicles adjacent to the embassies were detonated almost simultaneously before 10:45 am local time (3:45 am
Washington time).
[1] In Nairobi, about 212 people were killed and an estimated 4000 injured; in Dar es Salaam, the attack killed at least 11 and wounded 85.
[2]
Although the attacks may have been intended to kill employees of the United States government, most of the victims were African civilians: about 200 Kenyans were killed at the embassy in Nairobi, and 11 Tanzanians were killed in Dar es Salaam.
Aftermath and international response
Wreckage from the Nairobi bombing.
In response to the bombings,
U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered
Operation Infinite Reach, a series of
cruise missile strikes on terrorist targets in
Sudan and
Afghanistan on
August 20 1998, announcing the planned strike in a primetime address on American television.
Investigations into the embassy bombings were conducted by the FBI and Kenyan and Tanzanian authorities. A list of suspects was drawn up and several men were charged for their involvement in the bombings.
The embassies were heavily damaged, and one had to be rebuilt.
Twenty days after the bombings,
Uday Hussein (son of Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein) praised
Osama Bin Laden as "an Arab and Islamic hero."
[3] Later,
Richard A. Clarke, a top Clinton administration
counterterrorism official, asserted that Saddam Hussein may have offered bin Laden
asylum after the embassy bombings.
[4]
In
Afghanistan, then under the control of the
Taliban, a court declared on
November 20,
1998 that Osama bin Laden was "a man without a sin" in regard to the bombing.
The indictment
The current indictment
[5] charges the following twenty-one people for various alleged roles in this crime.
Latest Developments
On
June 1,
2007, the
USS Chafee fired its deck guns at suspected hideouts of an
Al-Qaeda suspect by the name of
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah who is one of the listed as responsible for the bombings, in the
Puntland region of
Somalia. It has not been reported if the shelling has been successful or not.
[12]
References
1. U.S. Embassy Bombings
2. Online NewsHour - African Embassy Bombings
3. How Bad Is the Senate Intelligence Report? Very bad., ''Weekly Standard'', 25 September 2006
4. The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 134
5. Copy of indictment USA v. Usama bin Laden et al., Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies
6. Four embassy bombers get life, CNN, 21 October 2001
7. c
8. c
9. c
10. Press release about 14 Guantanamo inmates, Office of the Director of National Intelligence
11. c
12. From MSNBC.com
External links
★
Rewards for Justice - Most Wanted Terrorists
★
US State Department website about attacks
★
Transcripts of Sentencing Phase of Embassy Bombers Trial
★
Primer on the attacks,
PBS
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