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,[citation needed] 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.[2]
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. [8]
References
External links
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