Khobar Towers bombing

The Khobar Towers bombing was a terrorist attack on part of a housing complex in the city of Khobar, Saudi Arabia, located near the national oil company (Saudi Aramco) headquarters of Dhahran. In 1996, it was being used to house foreign military personnel.

On June 25, 1996, per official statement, individuals identified as members of Hizballah Al-Hijaz (Party of God in the Hijaz) [ [http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/khobar.htm FBI-Khobar.KSA , Towers Bombings] ] [ [http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2001/06/khobar.html ATTORNEY GENERAL STATEMENT] ] by the United States, exploded a fuel truck adjacent to Building #131 in the housing complex. This eight-story building housed United States Air Force personnel from the 4404th Wing (Provisional), primarily from a deployed rescue squadron and deployed fighter squadron. In all, 19 U.S. servicemen and one SaudiFact|date=June 2008 were killed and 372 of many nationalities were wounded.

The attack

A November, 1995, car bombing in Riyadh led the U.S. forces stationed at Khobar Towers to raise the threat condition to THREATCON C. Days after the attack, military commanders briefed soldiers and airmen at Khobar that the U.S. had received anonymous communications from an organization claiming to have carried out the Riyadh attack. The attackers claimed their goal was to get the United States' military to leave the country, and that Khobar Towers would be attacked next if troop withdrawal did not begin immediately. It was at this time that surveillance and other suspicious activity near the perimeter fences of Khobar Towers was noted by U.S. security forces, however, the forces were forbidden by the Saudi government to act in any capacity outside the perimeter of the compound, and the surveillance continued with near impunity. [Based on personal knowledge of the author as having been stationed at Khobar Towers at the time.]

The terrorists were reported to have smuggled explosives into Saudi Arabia from Lebanon. In Saudi Arabia, they purchased a large gas tanker truck and converted it into a bomb. Al-Mughassil, Al-Houri, Al-Sayegh, Al-Qassab, and the unidentified Lebanese man bought a tanker truck in early June 1996. Over a two-week period they converted it into a truck bomb. The group now had about 5,000 pounds of advanced, high-grade plastic explosives, enough to produce a shaped charge that detonated with the force of at least 20,000 pounds of TNT, according to a later assessment of the Defense Special Weapons Agency.http://www.afa.org/magazine/june2006/0606desert.asp] The power of the blast was magnified several ways. The truck itself shaped the charge by directing the blast toward the building. Moreover, the relatively wide clearance between the truck and the ground gave it the more lethal characteristics of an airburst.It was originally estimated by U.S. authorities to have contained 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of explosives. Later the General Downing report on the incident suggested that the explosion contained the equivalent of 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of TNT. The terrorists prepared for the attack by hiding large amounts of explosive materials and timing devices in paint cans and 50-kilogram bags, underground in Qatif near Khobar. The bomb was a mixture of gasoline and explosive powder placed in the tank of a tanker truck. [news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/khobar/khobarindict61901.pdf] Initially, the attackers attempted to enter the compound at the main checkpoint. When they were denied access by U.S. military personnel, at around 9:43 p.m. local time, they drove three vehicles, two cars and the bomb truck, to a parking lot adjacent to building #131. A chain link security fence and a line of small trees separated the parking lot, used for a local mosque and park, from the housing compound. The perimeter of Building #131 was approximately convert|72|ft|m from the fence line, with a perimeter road between the fence and building which was often used by military personnel for jogging. The first car entered the parking lot and signaled the others by flashing headlights. The bomb truck and a getaway vehicle followed shortly after. The men parked the truck next to the fence and left in the third vehicle. The bomb exploded between three and four minutes later at approximately 9:50 p.m. local time.

An American sentry, Air Force Staff Sergeant Alfredo R. Guerrero, was stationed atop Building #131. He witnessed the men, recognized the vehicles as a threat, reported it to security, and began a floor by floor evacuation of the building. His actions are credited with saving dozens of lives. Many of the evacuees were in the stairwell when the bomb went off. The stairwell was constructed of heavy marble and was located on the side of the building away from the truck bomb, perhaps the safest location in the building. For his actions, Guerrero was awarded the Airman's Medal, the United States' highest peacetime award for valor.

Another security measure is thought to have minimized damage; along the security fence were Jersey barriers, concrete barriers commonly used along roadways. These deflected the blast energy upward, and away from the lower floors of the building, perhaps even preventing a total collapse of the structure.

The force of the explosion was enormous. The size of the charge created an intense dust storm as the forces of the high pressure blast wave and the subsequent vacuum forces caused considerable damage in their own right. Several military vehicles parked to the left side of building #131 suffered no direct impact from debris, but were heavily damaged by the sheer intensity of the shock wave.

It heavily damaged or destroyed six high rise apartment buildings in the complex. Windows were shattered in virtually every other building in the compound and in surrounding buildings up to a mile away. An enormous crater, convert|85|ft|m wide and convert|35|ft|m deep, was left where the truck had been and within a few hours was filling up partially with salt-water from the Persian Gulf, which is less than one mile (1.6 km) away. The blast was felt convert|20|mi|km away in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain. In the minutes following the blast, the residents of the complex evacuated severely injured U.S. military personnel from the area. With power out in many of the buildings near #131, the scene was chaotic and tense as little was known about the safety of the area from further attacks. Many residents later gathered in the local dining facility, set up as a triage center, and saw breaking news of the event on large projection televisions intended to bring news of events back home to the troops.

The U.S. victims

These are the nineteen U.S. Air Force servicemen killed in the blast.
* Captain Christopher J. Adams
* Captain Leland T. Haun
* Master Sergeant Michael G. Heiser
* Master Sergeant Kendall K. Kitson, Jr.
* Technical Sergeant Daniel B. Cafourek
* Technical Sergeant Patrick P. Fennig
* Technical Sergeant Thanh V. Nguyen
* Staff Sergeant Kevin J. Johnson
* Staff Sergeant Ronald L. King
* Sergeant Millard D. Campbell
* Senior Airman Earl F. Cartrette, Jr.
* Senior Airman Jeremy A. Taylor
* Airman 1st Class Christopher B. Lester
* Airman 1st Class Brent E. Marthaler
* Airman 1st Class Brian W. McVeigh
* Airman 1st Class Peter J. Morgera
* Airman 1st Class Joseph E. Rimkus
* Airman 1st Class Justin R. Wood [cite web|url = http://joshuawoody.com/wood3.html |title = In Memory of Justin Wood |accessdate = 2008-06-25]
* Airman 1st Class Joshua E. Woody

Indictment

On June 21, 2001 an indictment was issued in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, Virginia charging the following people with murder, conspiracy, and other charges related to the bombing:
* Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Mughassil
* Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed Al-Nasser
* Ali Saed Bin Ali El-Hoorie
* Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub
* Nine other Saudis
* One Lebanese man listed as "John Doe."The remaining five were Sa'ed Al-Bahar,Saleh Ramadan, Ali Al-Marhoun, Mustafa Al-Mu'alem and Fadel Al-Alawe.

In 2004, the 9/11 Commission noted that Osama Bin Laden was seen being congratulated on the day of the Khobar attack, and this raised the possibility that he may have helped the group, possibly by helping to obtain the explosives or the sophisticated timing device used to enable the escape of the perpetrators. According to the United States, classified evidence suggests that the government of Iran was the key sponsor of the incident, and several high ranking members of their military may have been involved. [cite news |title=Terrorism and Iran: Washington's Policy Performs a Gingerly Balancing Act |author=Risen, James, Jane Perlez |publisher=The New York Times |date=June 23, 2001] [An Op-Ed piece by Louis Freeh in the June 25, 2006 Wall Street Journal alleges Iranian involvement.] The U.S. government may have been hesitant to more aggressively pursue the offenders within the Iranian military due to the recent rise of a more reformist government and a desire to enhance relations with Iran at the time.Fact|date=June 2008 A U.S. federal court has speculated that the Khobar Towers bombing was authorized by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran. [ [http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/opinions/2006/2000CV2329-12036-12222006a.pdf Memorandum Opinion] , United States District Court, " December 22, 2006"]

William Perry, who was the United States Secretary of Defense at the time that this bombing happened, in an interview in June 2007, said that "he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base." [http://www.upi.com/Security_Terrorism/Briefing/2007/06/06/perry_us_eyed_iran_attack_after_bombing/7045/]

In addition to Secretary Perry, Saudi Prince Nayef, head of the Ministry of Interior and the lead investigating agency, has absolved Iranian involvement in the attack. [ [http://www.islamonline.net/english/News/2001-06/23/article14.shtml Islam Online- News Section ] ] [ [http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19980525/14550314.html Iran absolved from Khobar Towers bombing ] ] [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6465/is_200104/ai_n25765421] [http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-19725745.html] [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:UdQqtE-lkpUJ:www.afa.org/magazine/july1998/0798world.asp+Khobar+Iran+Prince+Nayef&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=90&gl=us]

ee also

* Riyadh compound bombings (May 12, 2003). The next major attack, which triggered a second series of terrorist attacks.
* Insurgency in Saudi Arabia

References

External links

* [http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/english/acts_of_terror/index.cfm?page=kt Bombing of Khobar Towers] , Rewards For Justice Program, US Department of State
* [http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/khobar.pdf Indictment] USA v. Ahmed al-Mughassil et al., at the FBI
* [http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/saudi.pdf House National Security Report hosted at Federation of American Scientists]
* [http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/1996/jun1996.html Department of Defense Casualty Releases]
* [http://joshuawoody.com/ memorial site for the soldiers lost in the Khobar Towers tragedy]