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1983 Beirut barracks bombing

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1983 Beirut barracks bombing
1983 Beirut barracks bombing
A smoke cloud rises from the rubble of the bombed barracks at Beirut International Airport.
Location Beirut, Lebanon
Target(s)
Date 23 October, 1983
6:20 am (UTC+3)
Attack type Suicide bombing
Deaths 299 military personnel, 6 civilians, 2 suicide bombers
Injured 75
Perpetrator(s) Unknown

The 1983 Beirut barracks bombing was a major incident on October 23, 1983, during the Lebanese Civil War. Two truck bombs struck separate buildings in Beirut housing U.S. and French members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, killing hundreds of servicemen, the majority being U.S. Marines. The blasts led to the withdrawal of the international peacekeeping force from Lebanon, where they had been stationed since the Israeli 1982 invasion of Lebanon. "Islamic Jihad" took responsibility for the bombing, but that organization is thought to have been a nom de guerre for Hezbollah receiving help from the Islamic Republic of Iran.[1]

Contents

The bombings

On around 6:20 am, a yellow Mercedes-Benz truck drove to Beirut International Airport, where the 1st Battalion 8th Marines, under the U.S. 2nd Marine Division of the United States Marine Corps, had set up its local headquarters. The truck had been substituted for a hijacked water delivery truck. The truck turned onto an access road leading to the Marines' compound and circled a parking lot. The driver then accelerated and crashed through a barbed wire fence around the parking lot, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through a gate and barreled into the lobby of the Marine headquarters. The Marine sentries at the gate were operating under their rules of engagement, which made it very difficult to respond quickly to the truck. By the time the two sentries had locked, loaded, and shouldered their weapons, the truck was already inside the building's entry way.

The USMC barracks in Beirut
The USMC barracks in Beirut

The suicide bomber detonated his explosives, which were equivalent to 12,000 pounds (about 5,400 kg) of TNT. The force of the explosion collapsed the four-story cinder-block building into rubble, crushing many inside. It is said by a U.S. federal district court judge to have been the largest non-nuclear blast ever (deliberately) detonated on the face of the earth.[2] According to Eric Hammel in his history of the Marine landing force, "The force of the explosion initially lifted the entire four-story structure, shearing the bases of the concrete support columns, each measuring fifteen feet in circumference and reinforced by numerous one and three quarter inch steel rods. The airborne building then fell in upon itself. A massive shock wave and ball of flaming gas was hurled in all directions." About 2 minutes later, a similar attack occurred against the barracks of the French La 3ème Compagnie, 1er Régiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes (3rd Company of the 1st Parachute Infantry Regiment), 6 km away in the Ramlet al Baida area of West Beirut. Another suicide bomber drove his truck down a ramp into the 'Drakkar' building's underground parking garage and detonated his bomb, leveling the eight-story building. Many of the French soldiers had gathered on their balconies moments earlier to see what was happening at the airport[3]

Rescue and clean-up crews search for casualties following the barracks bombing in Beirut on October 23, 1983. Photo by SSgt Randy Gaddo, USMC
Rescue and clean-up crews search for casualties following the barracks bombing in Beirut on October 23, 1983. Photo by SSgt Randy Gaddo, USMC
President Ronald Reagan (far left) and First Lady Nancy Reagan pay their respects to the caskets of the victims of the attacks
President Ronald Reagan (far left) and First Lady Nancy Reagan pay their respects to the caskets of the victims of the attacks

Death toll

Rescue efforts continued for days. While the rescuers were at times hindered by sniper fire, some survivors were pulled from the rubble and airlifted to the RAF hospital in Cyprus or to U.S. and German hospitals in West Germany [4] In the attack on the American barracks, the death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 Army soldiers. Sixty Americans were injured. In the attack on the French barracks, 58 paratroopers were killed and 15 injured, in the single worst military loss for the French since the end of the Algerian war.[5] In addition, the elderly Lebanese custodian of the Marines' building was killed in the first blast.[4] The wife and four children of a Lebanese janitor at the French building also were killed.[6] This was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima (2,500 in one day) of World War II and the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the 243 killed on 31st January 1968 — the first day of the Tet offensive in the Vietnam war. The attack remains the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since World War II. [7]

Response

President Ronald Reagan called the attack a "despicable act" and pledged to keep a military force in Lebanon. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said there would be no change in the U.S.'s Lebanon policy. On October 24 French President François Mitterrand visited the French bomb site. It was not an official visit, and he only stayed for a few hours, but he did declare: "We will stay." U.S. Vice President George Bush toured the Marine bombing site on October 26 and said the U.S. "would not be cowed by terrorists." In retaliation for the attacks, France launched an air strike in the Beqaa Valley against Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions. President Reagan assembled his national security team and planned to target the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah fighters.[8] But Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, reportedly because of his concerns that it would harm U.S. relations with other Arab nations. Besides a few shellings, there was no serious retaliation for the Beirut bombing from the Americans. In December 1983, U.S. aircraft attacked Syrian targets in Lebanon, but this was in response to Syrian missile attacks on planes, not the barracks bombing. In the meantime, the attack gave a boost to the growth of the new radical pro-Iranian Shi'ite organization Hezbollah. Hezbollah denied involvement in the attacks but was seen by Lebanese as involved nonetheless as it praised the "two martyr mujahidin" who "set out to inflict upon the U.S. Administration an utter defeat not experienced since Vietnam ..." [9] Hezbollah was now seen by many as "the spearhead of the sacred Muslim struggle against foreign occupation". Amal militia leader Nabih Berri, who had previously supported U.S. mediation efforts, asked the U.S. and France to leave Lebanon and accused the U.S. and France of seeking to commit 'massacres' against the Lebanese and creating a 'climate of racism' against the Shia." [10] Islamic Jihad phoned in new threats against the MNF "pledging that 'the earth would tremble' unless the MNF withdrew by new years day of 1984.[11] The Marines were moved offshore where they could not be targeted. On February 7, 1984, President Reagan ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. This was completed on February 26; the rest of the MNF was withdrawn by April.

Aftermath

At the time of the bombing, several radical Shiite militant groups claimed responsibility for the attacks, and one, the Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement, identified the two suicide bombers as Abu Mazen and Abu Sijaan.[12] After some years of investigation the bombing was thought to have been committed by the Lebanese Shia militant militia and political party Hezbollah while it was still "underground," though opinion is not unanimous. (Hezbollah went public in 1985, when it published a manifesto condemning the West and proclaiming, "Allah is behind us supporting and protecting us while instilling fear in the hearts of our enemies."[13] The U.S. government believes that elements that would eventually become Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, were responsible for this bombing,[14] as well as the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April. Hezbollah, Iran and Syria have denied any involvement. Author Hala Jaber claims that Iran and Syria helped organize the bombing which was run by two Lebanese Shia, Imad Mughniyeh and Mustapha Badredeen:

Imad Mughniyeh and Mustapha Badredeen took charge of the Syrian-Iranian backed operation. Mughniyeh had been a highly trained security man with the PLO's Force 17 . . . Their mission was to gather information and details about the American embassy and draw up a plan that would guarantee the maximum impact and leave no trace of the perpetrator. Meetings were held at the Iranian embassy in Damascus. They were usually chaired by the ambassador, Hoffatoleslam Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi, who played an instrumental role in founding Hezbollah. In consultation with several senior Syrian intelligence officers, the final plan was set in motion. The vehicle and explosives were prepared in the Bekaa Valley which was under Syrian control. [15]

Analysts believe a major factor leading Iran to participate in the attacks on the barracks was America's support for Iraq in the Iran Iraq War, its extending of $2 billion in trade credit to Iraq while halting the shipments of arms to Iran, [16]) A few weeks before the bombing Iran warned that the providing armaments to Iran's enemies would provoke retaliatory punishment. [17] Along with the U.S. Embassy bombing, the barracks bombing prompted the Inman Report, a review of the security of U.S. facilities overseas for the U.S. Department of State. In May 2003, in a case brought by the families of the 241 servicemen who were killed, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth declared that the Islamic Republic of Iran was responsible for the 1983 attack. Lamberth concluded that Hezbollah was formed under the auspices of the Iranian government, was completely reliant on Iran in 1983, and assisted Iranian Ministry of Information and Security agents in carrying out the operation.[18] Among the intelligence information initially uncovered by Thomas Fortune Fay, an attorney for the families of the victims, was a National Security Agency (NSA) intercept of a message sent from Iranian intelligence headquarters in Tehran to Hojjat ol-eslam Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus. As it was paraphrased by presiding U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, "The message directed the Iranian ambassador to contact Hussein Musawi, the leader of the terrorist group Islamic Amal, and to instruct him ... 'to take a spectacular action against the United States Marines.'"[19]Musawi's Islamic Amal was a breakaway faction of the Amal Movement and the autonomous part of embroyonic Hezbollah.[20] On September 7, 2007, Judge Lamberth ordered that Iran pay USD$2.65 billion to the families of the 241 U.S. servicepersons killed in the bombing. [21] However, some in the U.S. government claim it is unclear who is responsible for the Marine barracks attack. For example in 2001 the former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stated: "But we still do not have the actual knowledge of who did the bombing of the Marine barracks at the Beirut Airport, and we certainly didn't then."[22] In his book By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer, Victor Ostrovsky claims that Mossad knew in advance of the attack but did not warn the United States.[23] There have been claims that Israel wanted U.S. and French troops to leave Lebanon so it could freely operate in Lebanon without restriction.

See also

References

  1. ^ Ranstorp, Hizb'allah (1997), p.89-90
  2. ^ Lamberth, Royce C., U.S. District Judge. Memorandum Opinion in Peterson v. Iran and Boulos v. Iran (PDF). Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
  3. ^ 1st Parachute Regiment, Third Company. French Army. Retrieved on 2007-10-24.
  4. ^ a b Part 8 - Casualty Handling. Report of the DoD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act, October 23, 1983. Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
  5. ^ Wright, Robin, Sacred Rage, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p.72
  6. ^ "French Troops Heard Blast at Marine Headquarters, Then . . ." The Associated Press, October 30, 1983.
  7. ^ Hezbollah's Global Reach (PDF). Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia of the Committee on Internation Relations. House of Representatives, 109th Congress (September 28, 2006). Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
  8. ^ Bates, John D. (Presiding) (September 2003). "Anne Dammarell et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran" (PDF). The United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
  9. ^ quote from FBIS, August 1994, quoted in Ranstorp, Hizb’allah in Lebanon (1997), p.38
  10. ^ statement from November 22, 1983. Wright, Sacred Rage, (2001), p.99
  11. ^ statement from December 1983, from Wright, Sacred Rage, (2001), p.99
  12. ^ "1983: Beirut blasts kill US and French troops", On this Day — October 23, BBC. Retrieved on 2007-09-30. 
  13. ^ Goldberg, Jeffrey. "A Reporter At Large: In The Party Of God (Part I) — Are terrorists in Lebanon preparing for a larger war?", The New Yorker, October 14, 2002. Retrieved on 2007-09-30. 
  14. ^ Morley, Jefferson. "What Is Hezbollah?", Washington Post, July 17, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-09-30. 
  15. ^ Jaber, Hala. Hezbollah : born with a vengeance, New York : Columbia University Press, c1997. p.82
  16. ^ Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iran-Iraq war and Western Security, 1984-1987: Strategic Implications and Policy Options, Janes Publishing Company, 1987
  17. ^ For Iran's threat of retaliatory measures; see Ettela'at, 17 September 1983; Kayhan, 13 October 1983; and Kayhan, 26 October 1983, quoted in Ranstorp, Magnus, Hizb'allah in Lebanon : The Politics of the Western Hostage Crisis, New York, St. Martins Press, 1997,p.117
  18. ^ "Iran responsible for 1983 Marine barracks bombing, judge rules", CNN, May 30, 2003. Retrieved on 2007-09-30. 
  19. ^ Timmerman, Kenneth R. (December 22, 2003). Invitation to September 11. Insight on the News. Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
  20. ^ Lebanon: Islamic Amal. Country Studies. Library of Congress. Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
  21. ^ Apuzzo, Matt. "Iran is fined $2.65 billion in Marine deaths", September 7, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-07. 
  22. ^ Weinberger, Caspar. "Interview: Caspar Weinberger", PBS Frontline, 2001. 
  23. ^ Victor Ostrovsky: By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer. St. Martins Press, 1990.

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