Christian Message Boards: 1983 Suicide Bombing

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Posted by Caretaker (Member # 36) on :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

The bombing

On October 23, 1983, around 6:20 am, a yellow Mercedes-Benz delivery truck drove to Beirut International Airport, where the 1st Battalion 8th Marines, under the U.S. 2nd Marine Division of the United States Marines, had set up its local headquarters. 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 had loaded pistols but were not able to stop the driver even though they shot at him. According to one Marine, the driver was smiling as he sped past him.

The suicide bomber detonated his explosives, which were equivalent to 12,000 pounds (about 5,400kg) of TNT. The force of the explosion collapsed the four-story cinder-block building into rubble, crushing many inside.

About 20 seconds later, an identical attack occurred against the barracks of the French Third Company of the Sixth French Parachute Infantry Regiment. Another suicide bomber drove his truck down a ramp into the building's underground parking garage and detonated his bomb, leveling the headquarters.
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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 [1].

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 addition, the elderly Lebanese custodian of the Marines' building was killed in the first blast. [1] The wife and four children of a Lebanese janitor at the French building also were killed.[2]

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. The attack remains the deadliest post-World War II attack on Americans overseas.

Posted by Eduardo Grequi (Member # 3984) on :

Very well put! In all the casulties the radical islamics that put on the world far out way what western civilaziation has down against Islamic as a whole

Posted by ahar (Member # 5810) on :

The 1983 bombing was a terrible act - it's right that we remember it and pray for the victims families.

quote:
Originally posted by Eduardo Grequi:
In all the casulties the radical islamics that put on the world far out way what western civilaziation has down against Islamic as a whole

Not sure about that though - we Europeans have been killing and conquering people throughout the middle east since the time of the first crusade. Even in modern times, we British have a very shameful past in the Middle East and around the world - remember, Muslims are not confined to the middle east, Indonesia is the worlds most populace muslim nation for example.